Giants 2, Dodgers 0: Offense fails to cash in chance after chance

After last night’s dramatic win over the Giants despite the lack of scoring chances, today the Dodgers couldn’t cash in on chance after chance to get on the board. Unsurprisingly, that cost them dearly in the end, and they fell to the Giants 2-0 to even the series.

Rich Hill was back to his normal self on the mound today after a tinge of mediocrity hit in Arizona. Granted, Hill only lasted 77 pitches and five innings due to the Dodgers needing offense, but he did only surrender six hits and a walk while striking out seven. Unfortunately, one of those hits was a homer by Eduardo Nunez in the top of the fifth. Initially it was thought to be a triple off the top of the wall, but upon review it was shown that it hit a camera in the outfield, and the Giants had a 1-0 lead.

Pedro Baez, Luis Avilan, Adam Liberatore, and Josh Fields combined to get three scoreless innings out of the bullpen, allowing just two hits and a walk while striking out three Giants. However, Grant Dayton got only one out and surrendered a homer to Brandon Belt to make it 2-0 and a pop-fly single before exiting. Louis Coleman took over to keep the game close and he did … barely. He gave up a single and got two fly-ball outs that were hit to deep left, but they were outs nonetheless.

Didn’t matter anyway, as the Dodgers would’ve needed to score for any of it to matter, which they obviously didn’t. Getting shutout is one thing, but the Dodgers put a runner on base (usually multiple) in every inning through the first seven frames before going down 1-2-3 in the eighth and ninth. The chances were littered all over this game, and the Dodgers couldn’t take advantage of any of them. In the end, they were a comically bad 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position.

So yeah, that happened.

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Andrew Toles did this, by the way.

There can be no doubt he’s on the playoff roster.

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The loss drops the Dodgers to 85-66 overall and 48-28 at home. Obviously the NL West is down to 5 games now and the Magic Number remains at 7. This unfortunately puts some measure of pressure to win the rubber match tomorrow, which is not great since a lefty is on the hill.

The Dodgers and Giants finish the series tomorrow at 4:00 PM HST/7:00 PM PST/10:00 PM EST on ESPN and SportsNet LA. On the hill will be Kenta Maeda (3.24 ERA/3.52 FIP/3.50 DRA) squaring off against Matt Moore (4.06 ERA/4.29 FIP/4.89 DRA Overall, 4.01 ERA/3.83 FIP Giants).