Before the first pitch Friday night, the San Francisco Giants’ in-game stadium host made a declaration.
“This,” he informed the crowd in a scoreboard address, “is the most important game at Oracle Park this season.”
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In a 5-1 walk-off win over the Dodgers, the Giants certainly played that way, punctuating the night with Patrick Bailey’s grand slam off Tanner Scott in the bottom of the 10th.
After selling off key pieces at the trade deadline and languishing seven games under .500 just three weeks ago, the Giants (75-72) have miraculously catapulted themselves back into the playoff picture, winning 14 of their last 18 to pull within a half-game of the final National League wild-card spot.
Read more: Can the Dodgers fix their ailing offense? It starts with better health — and team at-bats
That run made this weekend a pivotal series for the once left-for-dead team. It attracted a near sell-out crowd to Oracle Park on Friday.
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For the Dodgers, however, this series carried its own importance.
And in a disappointing return to their lackluster second-half form, their offense failed its first test.
This past week, the Dodgers (82-65) appeared to be turning a corner. After a nightmare road trip to Pittsburgh and Baltimore, they had won four games in a row to gain some breathing room in the NL West standings.
At this point, what was just as important was stacking good performances and building momentum as the playoffs neared.
With a seven-inning, one-run gem on the mound Friday, Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave the Dodgers the perfect opportunity to do it.
Dodgers starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivers in the second inning Friday. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
But after an encouraging week against the last-place Colorado Rockies, the Dodgers’ mercurial offense once again went missing.
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Coming off his near no-hitter last week in Baltimore, Yamamoto gave up some damage early. Rafael Devers drew an eight-pitch walk in the second at-bat of the night. Then Willy Adames hammered a double to left-center, allowing Devers to score after Andy Pages bobbled the ball while trying to retrieve it up against the wall.
After that, however, Yamamoto went back to his unhittable form. He retired all 20 batters he faced over the rest of his seven-inning night. He racked up 10 strikeouts while inducing 15 swing-and-misses. He lowered his season ERA to 2.66, completing at least seven innings for the third time in his last four starts.
The only defensive help he needed was from Mookie Betts, who made a bare-handed play on a ball that clipped Yamamoto to end the second inning, then leaped to deny Adames a potential leadoff single in the seventh.
Offensively, however, the Dodgers failed to give him any meaningful support.
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Twenty-year veteran Justin Verlander cruised early on, working around only a pair of walks in the first three innings while fooling the Dodgers with spinning sliders and curveballs.
In the fourth, the Dodgers got their first two batters aboard, with Freddie Freeman singling and Max Muncy drawing a walk. However, Teoscar Hernández popped out on a second-pitch sweeper and Michael Conforto broke his bat on a ground ball to the right side that at least moved the runners. Then, what appeared to be a tying single from Pages was denied by a diving stop from third baseman Matt Chapman, who fired across the diamond to beat Pages on a bang-bang play.
The Dodgers would go quiet again until the seventh, when Conforto became an unlikely hero with a leadoff home run to straightaway center.
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Still, that did little to jolt the offense. Betts left two runners stranded with a flyout to end the inning. Muncy was hit by a pitch in the right forearm with one out in the eighth — eventually forcing him to exit the game — only for Hernández to fly out first-pitch swinging and Conforto to strike out on a full count.
The game nonetheless remained in the balance right to the end.
Read more: Dodgers sweep Rockies to keep growing NL West lead, but Will Smith is a late scratch
Left-handed rookie Jack Dreyer pitched a scoreless eighth inning, then was only chased in the ninth after a rare error from Betts and a single from Devers. With Blake Treinen on the mound, however, pinch-runner Grant McCray made a curious decision, getting easily thrown out at home while trying to score on a flyout to Pages (and his cannon of an arm) in center.
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Alas, the Dodgers returned the favor in the top of the 10th, when catcher Ben Rortvedt (once again starting for Will Smith, who continued to nurse a bone bruise on his right hand) was mowed down trying to take third as the automatic baserunner.
And after the Dodgers came up empty, the Giants finally ended things in the bottom half of the inning — when Scott came into the game, walked Jung Hoo Lee after failing to get a foul tip call for a potential third strike, then gave up a line-drive missile to Bailey with the bases loaded, handing the briefly surging Dodgers another sucker punch of a late-game defeat.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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