Three Dodgers streaks came to a crashing halt with one sweet swing of the bat from San Francisco second baseman Brett Wisely, whose two-run home run off reliever Blake Treinen in the bottom of the ninth inning gave the Giants a 5-3 walk-off win in front of a sellout crowd of 40,052 in Oracle Park.
Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani’s streak of 10 consecutive games with an RBI came to an end. So did the quirky streak of the Dodgers winning their first 24 games in which shortstop Miguel Rojas gets a hit. Also falling was the Dodgers’ four-game win streak.
The Giants took a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the sixth on Matt Chapman’s two-run home run off Dodgers reliever Daniel Hudson, and they handed that lead to hard-throwing closer Camilo Doval in the top of the ninth.
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But Andy Pages smacked Doval’s second pitch, a 99.5-mph fastball, toward the gap in left center, where center fielder Heliot Ramos got his glove on the ball with a lunge but couldn’t hold on, the ball rolling to the wall for a leadoff triple. Jason Heyward followed with a sacrifice fly to left to tie the score 3-3.
The Dodgers scored twice in the top of the fifth off Giants starter Logan Webb for a 2-0 lead, a rally that began with a Rojas single to right field and a Gavin Lux RBI double to the wall in left center.
Lux took third on a wild pitch, Cavan Biggio struck out looking, and Ohtani, one of baseball’s hottest hitters, was intentionally walked to put two on with one out for struggling catcher Will Smith, who was mired in a two-for-36 slump (.056) before lining an RBI single to center.
The Giants got one run back in the bottom of the fifth when Luis Matos hit a one-out solo homer off Dodgers starter Landon Knack. Wisely singled to right and took third on Jorge Soler’s two-out single to right, but left-hander Anthony Banda replaced Knack and got LaMonte Wade Jr. to ground to second, ending the inning.
Hudson, who was 4-1 with a 1.71 ERA, three saves and 12 holds in 32 games, replaced Banda to start the sixth. Ramos led off with a chopper to the right of first baseman Freddie Freeman, but the ball squirted out of his glove, and Freeman’s throw to Hudson at first was late on a play that was ruled an error.
Hudson got Patrick Bailey to fly to left for the first out, but he left a 95-mph fastball middle-in to Chapman, who crushed a 414-foot homer that left his bat at 110.5 mph to left-center for a 3-2 Giants lead.
Knack gave the Dodgers 4 ⅔ solid innings in which the rookie right-hander allowed one run and five hits, struck out seven and walked none to lower his ERA to 2.08 in 30 ⅓ innings over six starts this season.
With injured starters Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw all weeks away from potential returns, Knack, who made three starts after a mid-April promotion to the big leagues and one spot start for the Dodgers in May, will get an extended look in the rotation.
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“Every time we’ve called on him in this role, he’s done it,” manager Dave Roberts said before the game, “so it’s good for him to get a little bit of a runway, which he really hasn’t had until now.”
The Giants could fill an entire rotation with the five starters on their injured list — Blake Snell, Robbie Ray, Alex Cobb, Kyle Harrison and Keaton Winn — and their rotation is so thin they will go with bullpen games on Saturday and Sunday against the Dodgers.
One of the few quality starters still standing, Webb, gave his team a quality start, limiting the Dodgers to two earned runs and five hits in seven innings, striking out six and walking three to lower his ERA to 3.12.
Rehab report
Third baseman Max Muncy, out since May 15 because of an oblique strain, joined the team in San Francisco and has begun swinging the bat, hitting soft-toss and balls off a tee. Muncy was moved to the 60-day injured list last week and won’t be eligible to return until after the All-Star break, but he at least appears to be making progress.
“Guys on the IL typically don’t travel with us, but in this particular case, it’s three days, and our hitting guys can put some eyes on him,” Roberts said. “The next step is hitting on the field. He’s taking grounders, throwing, running, so at some point in time, he’ll take live batting practice, do a simulated game and from there, go on a rehab [assignment].”
Muncy aggravated the injury when he started hitting in the cage two weeks after going on the IL and did not swing a bat for almost a month, so the Dodgers are not about to rush him back.
“It’s open-ended,” Roberts said, when asked if Muncy will be ready to return when his 60-day IL stint is up. “We’ll see how he progresses. We’ve already had one setback, we don’t need another.”
Muncy started to ramp up his activity two weeks after the injury but had a setback and had to shut down his attempts to swing a bat. He has started that process again this past week, hitting off a tee and “flips” from coaches.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
