SAN FRANCISCO — For most of the week-long trip to Milwaukee and San Francisco, it looked like the All-Star break couldn’t get here soon enough for the Dodgers.
As it turned out, they actually needed to postpone it a little bit.
Two outs away from reaching the midsummer pause with a two-game winning streak, Tanner Scott gave up a two-run pinch-hit home run to Luis Matos. It was Scott’s seventh blown save this season, second this week. But the Dodgers rebooted the winning streak with three runs in the 11th inning to beat the San Francisco Giants, 5-2, Sunday afternoon.
The Dodgers shut down for four days now, hoping for short-term memory loss after losing seven of their last nine games. Still, they reached the All-Star break in first place in the National League West for the sixth time in the past eight full seasons – with a lead of at least five games for the fifth time in those years. Sunday’s win gave them the best record in the National League at the break for the fourth time in the past eight full seasons.
“Obviously getting a couple of wins and ending it on a good note after a really good first half that we played, so that was big today,” Freddie Freeman said.
“I mean, first place in the division with a pretty good lead and we played really good baseball. It could’ve been a little bit better if we didn’t lose seven in a row. But I think we’re pretty happy with how everything went.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts seemed like he had to remind himself to be happy about it.
“I think you can (be satisfied with the first half). I don’t think I’m in that camp,” Roberts said. “I think the win-loss, the standings are great. But I think there’s just a lot of improvement that we need to do, (things) we need to be better at.
“I think it’s all of it. The pitching, there’s some baserunning things, defense at times. It’s been steady, but the pitching, the offense we gotta get on track. I always expect more from our guys, and they expect the same thing. So it’s just probably a little bit of – it was an emotional weekend, so that’s probably a little bit of my demeanor. So certainly happy. I’m very happy. I might not be showing it. Good first half. But yeah, we should want to get better.”
Yoshinobu Yamamoto can’t get much better than he was in the first half, establishing himself as the Dodgers’ ace and making his first All-Star team. Erasing the bad taste from his previous start in Milwaukee, where he failed to make it out of the first inning, Yamamoto cruised through seven against the Giants.
“My last outing wasn’t good. But however, today, we were able to get this win and I think that was good,” Yamamoto said through his interpreter.
“Reflecting back (on his first half), I think there was too much difference between when I was good and when I was bad. I think that’s something that I need to work on getting into the (second) half of the season.”
He retired 21 of the 26 batters he faced Sunday, striking out seven. He walked two, gave up a pair of singles and a double but none of the baserunners made it past second base.
Yamamoto’s splitter was his most effective pitch again Sunday, getting six of his 13 swings-and-misses with it and helping to induce eight ground-ball outs.
“Yamamoto really stepped up for us today,” Roberts said.
The Dodgers needed that kind of effort because the offense reached the break slumping. Over the last nine games, they hit .203 as a team while scoring just 24 times (seven of those runs coming in Friday’s loss to the Giants).
“It’s the ebbs and flows of a baseball season. It’s going to happen,” Freeman said of the slump. “A couple of us got hurt, some of our guys, and kind of limped into the finish line here to the second half. But four days off comes at the right time.”
Sunday’s meager output featured just single runs in the fourth and fifth innings against Giants All-Star Robbie Ray.
The left-hander walked Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts to start the fourth inning. Two batters later, Freeman lashed a double into the right field corner, scoring Ohtani.
In the fifth, Miguel Rojas fouled off a pair of full-count fastballs from Ray, then turned on a slider, sending it into the left-field seats for a solo home run.
Ohtani singled two batters later but that was the last of the Dodgers’ three hits in the first 10 innings. It could have been enough but Scott’s 0-and-1 slider to .174-hitting Matos was over the heart of the plate and he hit it out to tie the game in the ninth.
“When using the slider – it’s just in-zone too much,” Roberts said of Scott’s renewed struggles. “He’s got to be able to move the fastball around a little bit. He’s got to be able to shorten the slider at times, when needed, when to strike it when needed.
“Essentially, he’s a two-pitch pitcher. They hunt a certain zone. And when it doesn’t get to where it needs to, then there could be slug. And that’s kind of what it is. That’s kind of as simple as it gets.”
The offense lurched to life long enough to reclaim the lead in the 11th inning on three consecutive two-out singles – a bloop hit by Freeman, an infield single by Teoscar Hernandez and an opposite-field single by Andy Pages.
Jack Dreyer and Ben Casparius combined to strand the Giants’ free runner in the 10th and 11th innings to close out the win.
“We’re in first place after the first half,” Freeman said. “I don’t know what more – like, first place by 50 games? I don’t know. First place is first place.
“I think we’re okay with where we’re at. We got some horses coming back at hopefully the end of July here after the All-Star break. … We get some guys back, and here we go again.”