LOS ANGELES–It’s hard to imagine a pair of storied rivals like the Dodgers and Giants clashing in a “meaningless” baseball game, but entering the final weekend prior to Major League Baseball’s trade deadline, that’s exactly what happened on Friday night.
When left-hander Alex Wood threw the first pitch of the game on Friday, the Dodgers held a 31.5 game lead in the National League West over the Giants, the largest gap between the two teams since 1985 and the largest difference this early in a season since 1902. At that time, Teddy Roosevelt was President, the Model T hadn’t been invented and both franchises would call New York home for another half-century.
It really hasn’t mattered what the Dodgers have done this season, and it hasn’t exactly mattered what the Giants have done, either. After nine innings have been played, the Dodgers are typically winners, and the Giants are usually losers. That was the case on Friday night.
But to accept the Dodgers’ 6-4 victory for what it is –just another win in what’s becoming one of the greatest seasons in Major League history– is to miss the drama and excitement the two rivals provided on a picturesque Friday night in Southern California.
Even though the Giants have suffered through a miserable 2017, they’ve been the Dodgers’ Kryptonite, taking six of the first 10 games the teams played this year. And for a brief moment on Friday, it appeared as though San Francisco would continue the most befuddling trend in baseball.
But then, reality kicked in. And Corey Seager, too.
With the Giants up 4-2 in the bottom of the seventh inning, Giants’ left-hander Matt Moore committed an outing-defining mistake, walking the leadoff batter, Austin Barnes on four pitches. The walk was especially damning, because for the first time in what feels like forever, Moore’s offerings were missing barrels and locking up opposing hitters.
“You don’t deserve anything when you do that after something like that,” Moore said. “Their leadoff hitter like that can take the base, that’s piss-poor. You’ve got to make him earn his way on there.”
When Joc Pederson’s double knocked Moore out of the game after 6.1 innings on Friday, he’d allowed just three hits, his fewest since a seven-inning stint in which he surrendered two at Dodger Stadium back on April 27. At that point, the Giants still had hope, as San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy had George Kontos and then Josh Osich ready to preserve the Giants lead.
And then Seager happened.
After Kontos gave up an RBI groundout to pinch hitter Yasiel Puig and a double to left fielder Chris Taylor that allowed Los Angeles to knot the score at 4-4, Osich entered to give the Giants a lefty-lefty matchup against Seager.
He wasn’t impressed.
On an 0-1 slider, Osich’s breaking ball broke right into the center of Seager’s barrel, and the Dodgers’ shortstop clobbered a towering, majestic home run that soared as high as it did far, and brought more than 50,000 fans to their feet.
“It’s in those moments in the seventh inning when you have runners on and the game is on the line and all of those pitches are the ones that you remember the most,” Moore said. “I’ve got to be better in the seventh.”
Seager’s second home run of the night –his first came off of Moore in the bottom of the first– had enough hang time for Giants and Dodgers’ fans alike to ponder the types of seasons their respective teams have put forth.
“He’s (Seager) a good player, an All-Star, he’s got power, got power the other way, he can pull the ball,” Bochy said. “He’s one of the nice players to come up in the last two-to-three years.”
For the Dodgers, it was another surreal moment in a campaign full of them. For the Giants, it was another heart-breaking zag in a season where they wanted to zig.
Seager’s sixth career multi-home run game helped the Dodgers to victory, and erased what was shaping up to be a feel-good story for San Francisco.
With Los Angeles ahead 2-1 in the top half of the seventh, Giants’ third baseman Jae-gyun Hwang stroked the seventh hit of his Major League career to plate shortstop Brandon Crawford and even the score. Though Hwang’s first career hit –a home run in a Giants’ victory over the Rockies on June 28– was more memorable, his game-tying single that ignited a three-run rally was perhaps more critical.
With Hwang on first, catcher Nick Hundley ripped a double past the dive of Dodgers’ third baseman Justin Turner, and the ball rattled around in the left field corner before Taylor could get a grip on it. With nothing to lose, Giants’ third base coach Phil Nevin gave Hwang an audacious wave toward the plate and ushered Hwang toward the plate. When the relay throw from arrived in the mitt of Barnes, Hwang went full belly flop and graded out with a ’10’ as he snuck his hand past a swipe tag to give the Giants their first lead of the game.
In the ensuing at-bat, the hottest hitter baseball fans have never heard of, Gorkys Hernandez, drilled a liner to center field that cleared the outstretched glove of Pederson in center field to score Hundley and give the Giants an insurance run that ultimately wouldn’t matter. The Dodgers still had nine outs to play with, and that meant Seager still had an at-bat left. This year, good luck.
“You’ve got to tip your hat to what they’ve been doing, it’s pretty special,” Moore said. “The way that they battle, you know tonight, it wasn’t just like homer, homer, homer, double, triple, with a bunch of hits out there. They battled and scrapped their way.”