Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Max Muncy was reacting to a scary HBP for Hunter Pence there, but may as well have been watching the Dodgers’ baserunning during the middle of Saturday’s game. Couple the struggles on the basepaths with Alex Wood‘s uneven regular season return, and the Dodgers bid for a 60-0 season came to an end.
The Dodgers did their best to rally late, including a Will Smith solo shot in the 9th to kill this man.
The homer cut the lead to 5-4, but Muncy, Mookie Betts and Cody Bellinger went down against Trevor Gott.
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Let’s get to Wood, who finished the day with 3 innings, 4 strikeouts, 3 walks, 3 hits and 3 runs allowed.
A leadoff walk to start the day led to San Francisco’s first run as Darin Ruf singled home Austin Slater, a sign of things to come.
A leadoff double down the left-field line in the second eventually turned into the second run of the game for the Giants, breaking their season high for runs this season. After Wood retired the next two batters, two-out walks to Tyler Heineman and Slater loaded the bases for Donovan Solano. Slater’s walk was particularly frustrating as Wood got ahead 0-2 before nibbling around the zone. He’d actually induce a groundout by Solano, but not before throwing a pitch in the dirt that Austin Barnes couldn’t control.
To wrap up his day, Wood allowed a third leadoff batter score as Wilmer Flores homered to open the third to take a 3-1 lead. Despite striking out two of the next three, that was Wood’s final inning.
Needing 69 (of course) pitches to get through three, Wood kept the ball on the ground with five groundouts, but was as wild as the numbers look.
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Turning to the Dodgers’ offense, Justin Turner tied the game in the first as he connected on a double to score Bellinger.
However, the offense went coldish from there, assisted by the aforementioned baserunning errors. Apparently infected by the Giants’ bad baserunning, the Dodgers were doubled off on balls in the air in the third, fourth and fifth.
In the third, Flores made a weird play on a ball hit by Corey Seager. After sort of over-running it, he reached back to make the catch and double Turner off of second.
Two AB’s from Seager, two crazy defensive plays to rob him of a hit pic.twitter.com/k5fLHeRFR5
— Blake Harris (@BlakeHarrisTBLA) July 25, 2020
Moving to the fourth, Chris Taylor erased his own leadoff single as he was thrown out at third following a single by Joc Pederson. Trying to advance on a ball that really didn’t roll all that far from the Giants, Taylor made the first out of the inning at third before Joc himself was doubled off first on a fly ball by Enrique Hernandez.
Not content with wasting three runners in two innings, Barnes found himself doubled off of first in the fifth following a line out by Betts.
The Giants’ poor fielding returned in the 8th, and an error allowed Seager to bring home a pair of runs with a two-out single. The Dodgers loaded the bases still trailing 5-3, but the 8th finally ended on a groundout by Hernandez.
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After Dennis Santana entered in the fourth and allowed yet another leadoff man to score thanks to a two-out, two-run double by Solano, the Dodgers bullpen held the Giants scoreless.
Joe Kelly pitched the 6th and did a weird thing. Throwing 15 straight breaking balls before trying a fastball, Kelly struck out two in his inning.
Blake Treinen pitched the 7th, needing just 8 pitches to shut San Francisco down. He looked pretty good facing the middle of the Giants order (I don’t think that really means much right now).
Jake McGee needed 21 pitches to do so, but he struck out three in his lone inning of work.
The trio of reclamation project pitchers looked good out of the bullpen for one day at least.
I should probably throw in Dylan Floro too, who needed just 9 pitches in the 9th for three groundouts.
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Some might think the cardboard cutouts are weird, but here’s what Fox went with today:
To make it worse:
I’m now 0-1 in my recap career.
