SAN FRANCISCO — The Dodgers finally looked like the Dodgers again on Friday night.
Too bad it didn’t happen until they were already down six runs.
For the first time in a week, the highest-scoring offense in baseball finally rediscovered its high-flying form, handing San Francisco Giants ace Logan Webb his worst start all season while sending shivers up the spine of the orange-clad contingent at Oracle Park.
But by the time it happened, the club had already dug a hole too deep for even its star-studded offense to climb out of, unable to completely erase an early six-run deficit in a 8-7 loss to their division rivals — sending them to a seven-game losing streak that marks the Dodgers’ longest skid since September 2017.
Friday, of course, never figured to favor the Dodgers given the difference in caliber of the starting pitching matchup.
On one side stood Webb, the crafty and relentless All-Star right-hander who has largely dominated the Dodgers in his seven-year career.
On the other was Dustin May, the once-promising Dodgers right-hander who has yet to realize his tantalizing potential in what has been his first fully healthy big-league season so far.
For a little while on a cold night along the San Francisco Bay, little separated the two sinker-ball specialists, the Dodgers and Giants locked in the kind of close contest that has been the hallmark of this rivalry in recent years.
In the top of the third, Shohei Ohtani even put the Dodgers in front, splashing his NL-leading 32nd home run of the season into McCovey’s Cove beyond right field for only the eighth-ever splash-down home run by a Dodger player in Oracle Park history.
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani tosses his bat after hitting a two-run home run in the third inning against the Giants on Friday.
(David Barreda / Los Angeles Times)
But eventually, May came unglued, giving up seven runs in less than five innings as the Giants surged to an 8-2 lead.
Two runs came in the fourth, after May was punished for back-to-back walks to lead off the inning by Jung Hoo Lee’s two-run triple.
The Giants (52-43) plated five more while batting around in the fifth. Dominic Smith led the inning off with a homer. May then gave up a single and two walks to promptly load the bases.
The Dodgers (56-39) missed their chance to escape the inning, when Hyeseong Kim failed to turn a difficult but potential inning-ending double-play quickly enough at second base. And after that, May was replaced by Anthony Banda, who was greeted with another two-run triple by Willy Adames (who had already homered to open the scoring in the second inning) and a run-scoring infield single from Lee, who outraced Banda to first base.
It was at that point, coming off a six-game stretch in which they’d scored 10 total runs, that the Dodgers’ bats finally came to life.
Mookie Betts grimaces in pain after being hit by a pitch in the sixth inning against the Giants on Friday night.
(David Barreda / Los Angeles Times)
In the top of the sixth, Teoscar Hernández launched a two-run double that Lee couldn’t quite corral on the run at the warning track, before Michael Conforto followed with a two-run homer that soared over Lee’s head to straightaway center.
In the seventh, the Dodgers struck again, when Mookie Betts slid into third on an error after hitting another ball just beyond Lee’s reach in center, and later scored on Will Smith’s RBI single.
That, however, was as close as the Dodgers would come. Smith was left stranded to end the seventh. Kim’s two-out double in the eighth was squandered. And, in the most frustrating of endings, a two-on, one-out opportunity in the ninth went by the wayside when Smith rolled into a double play.
The division lead is down to four.
For the first time in a while, the offense wasn’t the unit to blame.
But, as the Dodgers continue to stumble toward the All-Star break, it still wasn’t enough to finally break their skid.