SAN FRANCISCO — After mostly standing pat Tuesday afternoon at baseball’s trade deadline, Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi justified his decision not to dismantle a team free-falling out of playoff position by reasoning, “a hot two weeks can turn it around.”
After all, Zaidi said, “a bad two weeks put us in this position.”
However, the Giants’ stretch of poor play dates back far longer than a couple weeks and showed no signs of slowing Tuesday night in a 9-5 loss to the Dodgers, their second defeat in two games this series and sixth straight loss to their division-leading rivals. Since June 18, the Giants have gone 14-26 after Tuesday’s loss fell two games under .500.
The loss sent them a season-high 19.5 games back of the first-place Dodgers and kept them 4.5 games back of the Phillies for the final National League wild card spot, after Philadelphia also lost Tuesday.
A five-run rally in the fourth, capped by a Joey Bart homer, softened the blow of six runs allowed by a combination of more messy play behind starter Alex Wood and an otherwise subpar night from the veteran left-hander, whose ERA in six starts against his former club since joining the Giants rose to 5.68 (and 4.42 overall in 21 starts this season).
The Dodgers scored in three consecutive innings against Wood before knocking him from the game with one out in the sixth. A four-run rally that featured two Giants errors started the damage in the second, and Mookie Betts finished it off with a solo home run to lead off the fourth inning. They tacked on three more against San Francisco relievers with two doubles and two triples in the eighth, all with two outs.
Wood allowed a season-high nine hits en route to the six runs, which also matched a season-high.
In the four-run second, as Zaidi watched from the NBC Sports Bay Area broadcast booth, the Giants allowed two catchable fly balls to land in front of diving outfielders, botched a pickoff move that ended up in center field and allowed an extra base when center fielder Austin Slater struggled to pick up one of the balls that fell in front of LaMonte Wade Jr. Wood also plunked soft-hitting catcher Austin Barnes, who came around to score the last of the Dodgers’ four runs.
It was, at least, a banner day for Bart, coming hours after the club traded away veteran backup Curt Casali in a move Zaidi described as a “vote of confidence” in the young catcher. In addition to the 408-foot shot he slugged into the Giants’ bullpen, he finished off a strike-’em-out, throw-’em-out double play for the final out of the top half of the sixth and laid down a bunt base hit in the bottom half.
Brandon Belt and Wilmer Flores started the Giants’ fourth-inning rally with the team’s first hits of the night against Dodgers starter Tyler Anderson and came around to score on singles by Luis González and David Villar before Bart launched his two-run shot.
The Giants threatened to tie or take the lead in a 6-5 ballgame when they loaded the bases with no outs in the sixth but came up empty after Austin Slater went down swinging, the last of three straight Giants hitters retired by Dodgers reliever Evan Phillips to escape the jam.
Although San Francisco loaded the bases, the ball didn’t leave the infield: González and Villar led off with walks, chasing the starter Anderson, then Bart pushed a bunt past Phillips and beat the throw to first. But LaMonte Wade Jr. took strike three, Dixon Machado popped out to second and Slater struck out to end the inning.
After failing to capture an advantage Tuesday night, the Giants have held leads in exactly three half innings (and only once at the conclusion of an inning) of their past six games with the Dodgers — all losses — while being outscored 42-22.
____
