LOS ANGELES — The World Series pitching hero was on the mound and the back-to-back National League MVP hit a home run, yet the Dodgers still were unable to solve the San Francisco Giants.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto was tagged for a season-high five runs in 6⅓ innings. Shohei Ohtani hit just his second home run in 23 games with a trip to the plate and yet the Dodgers still saw their losing streak reach four games after a 6-2 loss to the Giants.
The longtime rivals have played five times this season and the Giants have won four of them. Yamamoto has taken the loss in two of the four defeats, giving up a combined eight runs.
“We’re confident in our team and everyone,” said outfielder Kyle Tucker, who is batting .253 with a .756 OPS in his first 41 games with the Dodgers. “No one’s freaking out or anything. I mean, our pitching staff’s done a phenomenal job. Our offense will do what they pretty much do every single year. Everyone has confidence in each other, going up to the plate and doing their part, so we’re all good in the clubhouse at least.”
It was the Giants’ Eric Haase who haunted Yamamoto this time. Haase became just the fourth Giants catcher to hit multiple home runs in a game against the Dodgers. Harrison Bader also hit a home run off Yamamoto, who had allowed five home runs over his first seven starts and never more than one in an outing.
“Overall, I think I was throwing pretty good pitches, except the three pitches I mislocated and it was easy for them to happen,” Yamamoto said through an interpreter.
Mookie Betts returned this week and yet the Dodgers’ offense remains disjointed. They have scored two runs or less in eight of their last nine losses going back to just April 28. The one defeat when they scored more was Monday’s three-run effort.
“Certainly, with hitting, it’s hard,” Manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “You don’t want to hear that panic word when guys aren’t hitting, but I do think that there’s a standard on expectations. And I don’t think that status quo, and ho-hum is the way to go, either.
“So I think that for me, just feeling like our guys understand that, that we do need to get better and we are not performing up to our expectations.”
Understanding the need for a higher sense of urgency is one thing. Doing it is another, even for a club that has proven offensive performers like Betts, Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, Max Muncy and Tucker.
The Dodgers appeared on track when they loaded the bases four batters into the game on singles from Ohtani and Freeman, while Tucker was hit by a pitch. But they scored just once in the inning on a Will Smith sacrifice fly that Giants right fielder Jung Hoo Lee tracked down near the warning track.
“Lee makes a great play over shoulder, which really could have been the difference in the game,” Roberts said. “Instead of giving up three runs and still one out, it’s two outs and one run. So that was a really game-changing play.
“I think that in total, when you don’t get a whole lot of opportunities and you don’t cash in on the couple that you do get, you don’t score a lot of runs. … We haven’t given ourselves as many opportunities as we’re used to.”
The Giants got Haase’s first home run of the game in the second inning before Ohtani matched it in the same frame with a home run to left-center that was his first in 53 plate appearances.
It was all Giants from there. San Francisco took the lead for good in the fifth inning when Bader and Haase hit back-to-back homers.
“I thought he came out and really pitched well out of the gate,” Roberts said of Yamamoto. “He gave up three homers to the bottom of the order. Major league hitters are major league hitters. You’re trying to kind of get through the bottom and get to the top.”
The Dodgers have the same number of home runs in the first two games of the series as the Giants had in the fifth inning.
“Obviously would love to rake every single game the entire year,” Tucker said. “But that’s not always the case, so you just got to kind of do your best, try and come in every single day and just try and make things happen and not force anything. Just try and take what you can, whether it’s drawing walks or moving guys over and trying to play good, clean baseball.”
San Francisco put the game away in the seventh inning when Drew Gilbert laid down a run-scoring bunt single and Lee hit a two-run double to the wall in right.
The Dodgers made noise in the eighth inning, loading the bases with one out on a Tucker double and walks to Freeman and Smith. But Muncy struck out and Andy Pages flew out to left.
“We’ve had some pretty good opportunities, we just haven’t capitalized on it,” Tucker said. “… It’s kind of just on us trying to be a little better and trying to get those runs in when we can because it’s not easy with the pitching we’re facing in this league. Whenever you have the opportunities like that, you have to capitalize on it.”