LOS ANGELES–Have you ever watched one of those college football teams that has the ball with time left on the clock, and you’re just certain that team is going to score and win? That’s what it’s like watching the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2017.
Regardless of the situation, regardless of their deficit and regardless of the odds, if there’s an out, or even a strike left, and the Dodgers haven’t won yet, you’d be betting against the house to pick against Los Angeles.
On Sunday night, the Dodgers saved perhaps their most dramatic walkoff win of the season for a series finale against the Giants, as pinch hitter Kyle Farmer stroked a 3-2 pitch off of Albert Suarez for a walkoff two-run double to catapult Los Angeles to a dramatic series sweep.
It was the Dodgers’ Major League-leading ninth walkoff win of the season, and it came on Farmer’s first career plate appearance. That’s right, in his MLB debut, Farmer became a hero in a season with heights that no know bounds.
“That guy is making his debut, and give him credit, that’s a nice piece of hitting there,” Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy said. “That’s a tough way to lose a game.”
After Yasiel Puig rapped an RBI single up the middle to tie the game in the ninth and give Giants’ closer Sam Dyson his first blown save as a San Francisco reliever, Joe Panik answered in the top of the 11th with an RBI single to plate Kelby Tomlinson. It was the second time the Giants had gone ahead and forced the Dodgers into the corner, but a prize fighter never gives up, and on Sunday night, the Dodgers didn’t die. They found new life, quite literally, in the form of Farmer.
“I was hoping to get him out, that was the plan,” Bochy said.”
Playing in front of a sold out Dodger Stadium for just the fifth time this season, Los Angeles gave a national audience the comeback it anticipated, and closed the door against a resilient Giants team with depths that know no bounds.
Traditionally, “Sunday Night Baseball” on ESPN is reserved for the game’s most compelling matchups, and in the second half of the season, network decision-makers almost always select contests featuring a pair of playoff contenders certain to draw a national audience.
In most seasons, it’s no surprise to see the Giants and Dodgers squaring off on national television on Sunday evenings, given the historic nature of their rivalry and the successes the franchises have enjoyed over the past decade. Plus, even if ESPN wanted to show Yankees-Red Sox every Sunday, the MLB schedule won’t actually permit them to play all 162 games against one another.
Typically, a late-July battle between the California-based foes has the potential to swing the pendulum in the National League West, but as you know, this was no ordinary Giants-Dodgers matchup.
Though ESPN had plenty of reasons to flex the Giants-Dodgers matchup into the Sunday evening time slot, the opportunity for the game to shape the NL West standings in a meaningful way was not among them. Not this season.
Entering Sunday’s contest, the Dodgers had already taken the first two games of the series, and even though the Giants looked competitive on the field, the two losses dropped San Francisco 33.5 games back of Los Angeles in the standings. With the sweep, San Francisco now sits 34.5 games out, but hey, Monday is the trade deadline and there’s still time for the standings to shift.
Though documenting the Giants’ historic decline may not have been at the front of the minds of network heads when Sunday’s game was moved to ESPN, manager Bruce Bochy’s ballclub showcased a number of the key reasons why San Francisco is suffering through what could turn out to be the worst season in franchise history.
Still, though, the Giants believe in their cause, and in the eighth inning, pinch hitter Conor Gillaspie proved why.
Gillaspie isn’t an everyday player, and there are no indications that he’s going to be one any time soon. But as long as he’s available off the bench, the San Francisco Giants are happy to have him around.
In the top of the eighth Sunday evening, Gillaspie pinch hit for Giants third baseman Jae-gyun Hwang and launched an 0-2 fastball into the right field seats to push the Giants ahead 1-0.
Gillaspie’s seventh career pinch hit home run, and his second in the past two weeks, wouldn’t have even happened if not for a late-game move from Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts to turn the game over to the Dodgers’ bullpen.
After seven shutout innings from starter Hyun-Jin Ryu, Roberts pulled his left-handed starter after just 85 pitches and gave way to righty Josh Fields. Had Ryu stayed in, Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy would have left Hwang in to face his fellow countrymate from South Korea.
Even though Hwang was 0-for-2 against Ryu with a strikeout on Sunday night, he’d recorded 45 at-bats against Ryu in the Korean Baseball Organization, where Hwang played for 10 seasons before signing a minor league contract with the Giants this offseason.
But with Ryu out of the game, Bochy called on Gillaspie, the premier left-handed power hitter on the team’s bench, and he delivered. A career .204 hitter against southpaws, Gillaspie certainly wasn’t a candidate to face Ryu had Roberts stuck with the hot hand. But instead, Roberts played matchups, and Bochy won, even though that victory was only temporary. Remember, these are the 2017 Dodgers.
Though Ryu was outstanding, Giants left-hander Madison Bumgarner matched his every move on Sunday, tossing seven innings of shutout ball while allowing just five hits and striking out seven Los Angeles hitters.
While Bumgarner turned in the type of night the Giants needed, it took until the 11th for anyone else to do the same. And even when Panik rose to the occasion, the Dodgers still had an answer.
“The only goal you should have as a team is to win,” Bumgarner said. “I don’t think that’s changed. It’s the only thing we can do at this point.”
Over the first seven innings of Sunday’s game, San Francisco produced hits in four separate innings, and in each of those innings, the Giants had a base runner wiped out with a double play. Ultimately, San Francisco would hit into six, the most the Giants have hit into since moving from New York.
The most remarkable came in the seventh inning, when Dodgers center fielder Enrique Hernandez caught a flyball off of Brandon Crawford’s bat, and ripped off one of the finest throws a Dodgers outfield that boasts Puig’s arm will produce all season.
Hernandez’s laser to catcher Austin Barnes was as level as a yardstick and carried the force of an out-of-service train rushing through a busy station at rush hour. The Giants wanted that train to stop, but it would barrel all the way through to Barnes, who applied a tag on Panik to stop him three feet shy of home plate.
The throw was much like the Dodgers this season, in that nothing could stop it. Regardless of what the Giants did this weekend, San Francisco had no solution. Instead, the Giants had a front row seat to history in the making.