SAN FRANCISCO –– For six innings Wednesday night, Shohei Ohtani tortured the San Francisco Giants’ offense.
The minute he left the mound, everything changed.
In the Dodgers’ 3-0 loss at Oracle Park, Ohtani’s pitching was the only bright spot in what was the club’s fourth loss in its last five days.
While he spun six scoreless frames, neither the lineup nor the bullpen could provide any support, setting the stage for a back-breaking sequence in the bottom of the seventh.
With Ohtani’s night over after 91 pitches, left-handed reliever Jack Dreyer took the mound and immediately gave the game away. The first two batters he faced both singled. Then, after a sacrifice bunt, he hung a two-strike slider to Patrick Bailey that the Giants catcher –– and previously .145-hitting No. 9 batter –– clobbered for a no-doubt three-run homer.
The way the Dodgers’ offense has been going this series, the defeat was essentially sealed right there.
For the first time this season, the team was shut out in a game, finishing the night with just four hits.
Giants starter Tyler Mahle frustrated them over seven scoreless innings. And after the fourth, they never even put a runner in scoring position.
As a hitter, Ohtani wasn’t immune to such struggles, losing his 53-game on-base streak with a 0-for-4 performance.
But, outside of Freddie Freeman and his two hits, just about every other Dodgers hitter failed to make an impact, as well.
“Obviously with Shohei, we always expect more,” Roberts said, with Ohtani now just 7-for-his-last-29 at the plate and batting .258 this season. “But it’s just one of those things these last couple nights, we haven’t really swung the bats well. We haven’t.”
What it means
The defeat clinches a losing road trip for the Dodgers (16-8), who have gone 2-4 this week against the Giants (11-13) and Colorado Rockies.
Now, they are in danger of suffering their first series sweep of the season, too.
Not what they were expecting from a trip in which they faced two sub-.500 teams.
Who’s hot
Ohtani, the pitcher.
In his six scoreless innings, the right-hander continued his electric start to the season. He struck out seven batters. He gave up just five hits. He didn’t walk anyone. And he had some of his best raw stuff in a Dodgers uniform.
His fastball averaged a season-high 98.8 mph, and eclipsed the 100 mph mark seven times. His sweeper was almost unhittable, generating a whiff 9 of the 15 times the Giants swung at it.
At the end of his night, he even showed some rare emotion, stranding runners at second and third in the sixth with a strikeout of Casey Schmitt that had him pumping his fist as he spun off the mound.
Though Ohtani might have been able to keep going, Roberts said he didn’t want to push his two-way star so early in the season –– especially after the stress of the sixth.
“You can see he was emptying the tank right there,” Roberts said, “because we clearly haven’t been scoring runs.”
Still, in four starts overall this year, Ohtani has now allowed just one earned run in 24 innings, good for a 0.38 ERA to go along with 25 strikeouts.
“You saw it from the outset, just where his head was at, the velocity, it was going to be hard to get runs off him tonight,” Roberts said. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t support him on the offensive side.”
Who’s not
The Dodgers’ offense indeed –– including Ohtani, the hitter, who failed to set a new record-long on-base streak in the franchise’s Los Angeles history after tying Shawn Green at 53 games.
Ohtani, of course, was far from the only disappointment on Wednesday.
Kyle Tucker also failed to reach base in a 0-for-4 clunker, dropping his early-season batting average down to .233.
Teoscar Hernández, Andy Pages and Hyeseong Kim were hitless, as well, while squandering the team’s two best chances of the night –– Hernández by grounding out with two aboard to end the first inning, and Pages and Kim by doing the same in the fourth after the Dodgers had gotten runners to second and third base.
Up next
The Dodgers will try to avoid their first sweep this season in Thursday afternoon’s series finale. Tyler Glasnow (2-0, 3.24 ERA) will face Logan Webb (2-2, 5.40 ERA) in the 12:45 p.m. start.
