In loss to Dodgers, SF Giants blow chance to build 3-game winning streak

SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants are still all by themselves.

Done in by the Dodgers in extra innings Monday night, the Giants remained the only team in the majors yet to win three games in a row.

After prevailing the past two days against the Cincinnati Reds, it looked like the Giants were on their way to joining the 29 other clubs when Heliot Ramos laced a go-ahead single in the sixth inning, but their bullpen wasn’t able to hang on in a 6-4 loss to open a three-game series.

“We just haven’t played well enough in a lot of the facets of the game,” manager Bob Melvin said afterward. “You look at some of the numbers, they’re not that good offensively or on the pitching side and defensively, we made some mistakes, too. You have to do a couple of things really well to put together a win streak. I believe we will.”

Taylor Rogers took the loss for serving up a 0-1 sinker down the middle to Will Smith, who sent the pitch sailing over Luis Matos’ head in center field and to the warning track, allowing the Dodgers’ automatic runner, Mookie Betts, and the batter Rogers walked, Freddie Freeman, to score the decisive runs.

In four tries against their archrivals, the Giants are still seeking their first win this season, falling to 17-30 against the Dodgers at Oracle Park since 2018.

“It was their big boys at the end there,” Melvin said. “It’s tough to navigate around, too. You’ve got some lefties and you’ve got Smith sitting in the middle of them. He’s the guy that got the big hit off our lefty. You do the best you can to manage it. We had a couple other opportunities offensively, but it came down to that last inning and it was one big swing.”

All of the Giants’ runs were generated by Ramos and Matos, two young outfielders not even on the roster a week ago.

With Jung Hoo Lee becoming the Giants’ seventh position player since last Friday to land on the injured list, the two rookies were inserted into the starting lineup as they are expected to at least until the team begins to heal.

Knocking Yoshinobu Yamamoto from the game with two outs in the sixth inning, Ramos delivered the go-ahead hit after the Dodgers starter issued his first two walks of the game. Ramos laced a first-pitch slider into left field at 108.2 mph, allowing Matt Chapman to score from second.

Before first pitch, Melvin said that Matos was “going to get a pretty good shot out there,” filling in for Lee in center field, and the 23-year-old Venezuelan wasted no time taking advantage of it. Jumping on a hanging curveball from Yamamoto, Matos deposited the ball about a quarter of the way up the left-field bleachers.

“That’s what we want; we want an opportunity,” Matos said through Spanish-language interpreter Erwin Higueros. “I already feel comfortable coming up here. I see a lot of players that I’ve seen before, plus I see a lot of young players that I saw in Triple-A. So that alone right there makes me feel comfortable when I come up here.”

The home run was Matos’ first of the season and put the Giants ahead 3-1, generating more runs on one swing than the Dodgers’ Japanese import had surrendered over his past three starts. Since the Padres tagged Yamamoto for five runs in his first MLB start, the four runs allowed to the Giants matched his most in eight starts.

“I thought we had a pretty good approach,” Melvin said. “We were probably a little more aggressive than typically; that’s why his pitch count (84 in 5⅔ innings) was low. But we scored four runs off him in five-plus. I think that’s pretty good based on how he’s been pitching this year.”

The Dodgers entered the series having limited their opponents to four or fewer runs for their past 19 games, going 15-4 in those contests. The Giants went 9-11 over the same time, widening chasm in the National League West standings from 1½ games on April 21 to eight entering Monday night.

The standout star of spring training, Matos had struggled to translate his Cactus League success into results at Triple-A to start the season. His contact skills allowed him to strike out only 13 times in 143 trips to the plate, but his .663 OPS paled in comparison to the 1.003 figure he posted in spring training.

“I keep making adjustments,” Matos said. “The swing has been there; I’ve been making good contact. It’s just that the results haven’t come. It’s baseball, and you always make adjustments.”

When Jorge Soler went on the injured list last Wednesday, the first call went to Ramos, who was leading the River Cats with eight home runs and a .953 OPS. It wasn’t until Michael Conforto joined Soler on the IL that Matos received his call, and not until Lee’s catastrophic collision on Sunday that opened a regular role for him in center.

The contributions stood in contrast to the base running blunder from another young player, Tyler Fitzgerald, who was picked off first as soon as he was called upon to pinch-run for Wilmer Flores in the bottom of the ninth, representing the potential winning run.

“You can’t get picked off there; he knows that,” Melvin said. “We’re going to have some mistakes from time to time, but there was a lot of energy. … That’s going to come with youth sometimes. You want them to be aggressive. Sometimes a little too (much).”

Opposing Yamamoto, Jordan Hicks pitched around traffic in all five of his innings but walked off the mound in line for the win. The Dodgers forced him to throw 93 pitches to complete five innings but mustered only one run after Mookie Betts led off the game by sneaking a line drive over the left-field wall.