The San Francisco Giants failed in their quest to Beat LA on Thursday night, losing 2-1 to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a game that was fascinating, bizarre, and as frustrating as any game in recent memory. It was the sort of game where, if it had transpired in May against the Minnesota Twins, you would have cackled at the outrageousness of it, and perhaps even looked back on it fondly a few weeks later. But in September against the Dodgers, it was the sort of game that caused you to cackle to distract
others from the tears streaming down your eyes, and to distract yourself from growing your fingernails out just to evict your eyeballs from their sockets in the most painful fashion imaginable.
I’m worried I can’t do the game justice, which is probably a gift to anyone reading this. And because of that worry, before I even try to depict what wonkiness just transpired, I’m just going to give you, in chronological order, the end result of all 37 plate appearances the Giants had on Thursday night. I’ll even bold a few of the outcomes. See if you can spot a theme.
Ready? Here we go.
Ground out
Fly out
Walk
Walk
Strikeout
Ground out
Line out
Single
Foul out
Ground out
Strikeout
Ground out
Walk
Strikeout
Walk
Strikeout
Strikeout
Ground out
Walk
Strikeout
Walk
Strikeout
Line out
Strikeout
Walk
Walk
Strikeout
Walk
Walk
Strikeout
Strikeout
Line out
Strikeout
Ground out
Strikeout
Strikeout
Line out
From two outs in the fifth through two outs in the ninth, the Giants sent 24 batters to the plate, and four of them put the ball in play.
It was just the seventh time in MLB history — and first time since 1977 — that a team had drawn 10 or more walks with one or fewer hits. That’s equal parts impressive and humiliating, and thanks to a heroic performance by Logan Webb, it was nearly enough for a victory.
Webb and Yoshinobu Yamamoto went blow for blow in a pitching matchup that somehow exceeded expectations. Neither player was particularly hittable, but Webb — by virtue of only walking one batter to Yamamoto’s six — outpaced his foe in the pitch count department.
They both had to labor through the first, with Yamamoto throwing 25 pitches following a pair of walks, and Webb throwing 22 after one free pass. The Giants had long at-bats in the second, pushing Yamamoto’s count to 47, while Webb’s rose to 40.
And that’s where they went in separate directions. After five innings, Yamamoto had thrown 94 pitches, while Webb had tossed a mere 67.
That was enough to get the Giants, mercifully, to LA’s struggling bullpen. Yamamoto walked Willy Adames to lead off the sixth inning and then struck out Matt Chapman, and, having blown past the 100-pitch mark, was taken out of the game by Dave Roberts. With Adames having stolen his way to second, the Giants had their first crack at scoring, but it was thwarted by an all-too-familiar sight from their jaunt to Phoenix: a scorched ball by Bryce Eldridge that found a mitt.
The Giants seemed to have the advantage at that point, as they had been the first team to crack the shell of the All-Star starter to face the not-so-hot bullpen, and the Dodgers had not yet managed to do that. But the bottom of the sixth showed one of the many differences between the two rivals: while Webb and Yamamoto had put up similar lines, the Giants ace’s results were more impressive, by virtue of having to take down a significantly more dangerous lineup. A lineup that finally figured things out in the sixth.
It began with some table setting, as eighth-place hitter Miguel Rojas led off with a single. But that was countered by brilliant defense, as Matt Chapman rushed in on a Ben Rortvedt bunt and managed to get Rojas out at second.
However, that turned the lineup over to LA’s power trio, and they delivered. Shohei Ohtani ripped a double off the wall so hard that it almost felt remarkable that Rortvedt was able to make it to third. There were runners at second and third with just one out, and a finally-playing-like-himself Mookie Betts in the batter’s box.
Then came the defining moment of the game, and one that highlighted yet another difference between the teams: the margin for error. Large for the dudes in blue. Tiny for the folks in orange.
Betts chopped a ball to shortstop, where Adames fielded it cleanly and fired a throw home. Bailey, knowing the importance of getting the out, tried to execute a perfect swipe tag rather than settling for a good one, and was unable to catch the ball in the process.
The error, while understandable, had cost the Giants a run, and built what felt like an insurmountable 1-0 deficit. Three pitches later, the deficit doubled with a single up the middle by Freddie Freeman.
That was all the Giants would allow. Webb and Adames worked magic to escape the inning and strand Betts at third, with the pitcher getting Max Muncy to weakly fly out and shortstop throwing out Teoscar Hernández with what was truly one of the best defensive plays I’ve ever seen a Giants shortstop make. Which, it goes without saying, is saying something.
But if Bailey’s dancing-on-the-margins error was the defining moment of the game, the top of the seventh, as a whole, was what you’ll remember. Michael Kopech took the mound for the Dodgers, and it was clear from his first pitch that he had no idea where the ball was going. He walked Jung Hoo Lee on six pitches and then Bailey on five, sprinkling in a wild pitch for good measure. On the Dodgers’ broadcast, the announcers remarked that only the three-batter minimum rule was keeping Kopech in the game, and they weren’t wrong.
After Drew Gilbert chased ball three and struck out swinging, Roberts turned to Blake Treinen, who walked Heliot Ramos on five pitches, loading the bases with just one out. The Giants were poised to strike.
They were even more poised to strike when Treinen walked Rafael Devers on a 50/50 pitch that delightfully made LA’s controversial reliever nearly have a public conniption.
The Giants needed just one more run to tie the game, and all it would require was putting the ball in play to one of the many available parts of the yard.
But Adames struck out looking on a pitch that was tracking as ball four for the first 59 feet of its path. And Chapman struck out swinging, chasing a sweeper he never had a prayer of hitting.
And while there were still two innings remaining, you knew exactly what the outcome of the game would be. Tragically, you were correct.
