Ten Giants hitters stepped up to the plate on Saturday night before Shohei Ohtani or any other Dodger got to touch a baseball bat. In the top of the 1st, they recorded four hits, worked three walks, and plated four runs, forcing starter Tyler Glasnow to labor through 40+ pitches.
Bryce Eldridge in his fourth Major League game and eleventh Major League plate-appearance lined a 2-1 sinker over the head of Michael Conforto in left field for his first Major League hit. The baseball buried itself at the base of the wall,
and as Conforto struggled to dig it out from the wall, Heliot Ramos scored from third, Willy Adames from second, and Matt Chapman all the way from third. No Giant had ever notched a 3-run double as their debut hit. A month shy of his 21st birthday, Eldridge became the youngest Giant to bat in multiple runs since Jack Clark 49 years ago.
Altogether, it was a pretty chill way to start a baseball game. One would rather jump out to a 4-run 1st inning lead than not. It’s a good chunk of runs, a nice tone-setting rally — but no weathered Giants fan, who has lived through the extreme highs and lows of this Oregon Trail season, is operating under the illusion that four runs were going to be enough.
No, no, no, no of course not, no.
Those four runs couldn’t even be celebrated — they just served as a reminder of the wounds still being licked from last Saturday when the Giants put up a historic 4-run 1st on Clayton Kershaw only to lose 13-7. And that was with the supposedly solid back-up of Logan Webb on the mound — this Saturday, San Francisco had to rely on the incredibly green rookie Kai-Wei Teng. to help make that lead stick.
Though Teng has intrigued at moments, his season on the mound has been incredibly checkered. What he brings to the mound is compelling on a stuff level, but it’s his consistency, his durability, his everything else required to be a successful pitcher that sows doubt. Hunter Pence from the broadcast booth kept comparing the movement he was getting on some pitches to Wiffle balls — and some of the chase swings he fetched from LA bats were amateurish and wild. The dark side of that spinning plastic orb though is half the time the pitcher doesn’t know where it’s going as well.
That volatility, that erratic command can cause a promising at-bat or frame or start to flip on a pitch. We saw that when the Doogers finally got their first ups. Teng cruised through two of the best hitters in the league. Ohtani K’ed on an up-and-away fastball. Mookie Betts chased a sweeper well off the plate and away. Teng put Freddie Freeman in a quick 0-2 hole before spiking a curveball into Freeman’s front toe. Out of nowhere, a baserunner, stress. From the stretch, Teng fell behind to Max Muncy, allowing him to sit on one pitch, and when he got the elevated fastball he drove into the right field bleachers.
San Francisco’s 4-run lead didn’t even survive a half-inning.
To his credit, Teng didn’t let that set-back rattle him too much. Muncy’s homer would be LA’s only hit against Teng. He hit two more batters and walked two more as well after the homer, but also struck out four more. It was pitch count that got him after just three innings. 80-something pitches has been his allotted amount in his outings and the deepest he’s been able to stretch that has been one-out in the 6th in Denver. The right-hander has 39 strikeouts on the season in 29.2 innings pitched, but he’s also been his own worst enemy, handing out a combined 24 walks and hit-batters. Those free bases are a serious wrinkle that undermines his ability to go deeper into games despite his clear ability to elicit poor contact or miss bats completely.
With Teng off the mound, José Buttó took over the 4th to handle the bottom half of the LA line-up. Number 8 hitter and (based on how he plays against his old team) MVP candidate Michael Conforto connected for a solo shot. With two outs, Buttó pitched around Ohtani to face the righty Betts, but then couldn’t rediscover his command to walk him as well. A run already in, and a rally for free, Bob Melvin swapped in Matt Gage for the left-on-left match-up against Freeman, who pulled a 2-strike single through the right side of the infield for a game-tying single. Comeback complete. Feel-good1st erased.
LA would go on to take the lead in the 5th and pad it with a two-run 6th. In these six September games so far, production from the LA lineup in those middle innings have been the difference. Close games have burst at the seams. Leads have been flipped. Small, surmountable deficits have widened into gulfs. San Francisco arms haven’t had the depth or endurance or resilience to suppress Dooger bats for more than half a game. Across these two series so far, LA has scored 25 runs across those two frames. The Giants? 3.
Four homers fueled LA’s unanswered scoring stretch while the San Francisco line-up twiddled their thumbs. After a disastrous start, Glasnow stayed on the mound through the 5th, limiting opponents to just two more hits and a walk. Rafael Devers scooped a solo shot off reliever Kirby Yates in the 7th, but San Francisco couldn’t capitalize on other baserunners given up by the veteran.
Just like Friday’s final score, Saturday’s 7-5 loss wouldn’t be considered a blow-out by any scoreboard watchers. But if you watched the game, read the body language of the players in the two dugouts, and experienced the heel-to-the-soul pain of another lead trampled — the gap in the run totals, and these teams, is as wide as a canyon.
