SAN FRANCISCO — Tyler Glasnow and Robbie Ray spent the first innings of Sunday’s game searching for the strike zone like two men in a dark room, groping for the light switch.
Ray never saw the light – and barely saw the fifth inning. The Dodgers took advantage of his wildness and chased him from the game with a four-run inning that sent them on the way to a 10-2 victory over the San Francisco Giants.
Held to one run on four hits in 10 innings Friday night, the Dodgers came to life with 23 runs on 35 hits in the next two games. Teoscar Hernandez had four of those hits. Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Michael Conforto each had three-hit games.
“I think it’s more of going back to and starting with the Colorado series – just better at-bats,” Freeman said of an offense that has scored 43 runs while winning five of the past six games. “It’s quality at-bats, quality outs, moving guys over, getting sac flies, bringing defenses in if you move them over. It creates more traffic, more things that are able to happen on the baseball field. I just think the quality of at-bats have been really good over the last week.”
No one had a broader smile over Sunday’s results than Conforto. He entered as a pinch-hitter during that four-run fifth inning and went 3 for 4 to raise his average to an even .200. It is the first time he ended a day with a batting average of .200 or higher since April 19.
“That’s nice. It’s been a long time. It’s been like five months,” Conforto said.
“He’s off the interstate, which is a good thing,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Conforto escaping the .100s.
By taking two out of three in San Francisco, the Dodgers put a dent in the Giants’ unexpected wild-card contention and maintained their 2½-game lead in the division over the San Diego Padres. They also closed to within a still-daunting 4½ games of the Philadelphia Phillies for the second seed in the National League playoffs. The Phillies come to LA for a three-game series beginning Monday.
“We want the bye, obviously. And obviously, we’ve played ourselves into this position,” Freeman said of the prize that comes with the second seed. “We’ve got two weeks left, got a big series against them. So hopefully we can continue to keep playing the baseball we’ve been playing and hopefully win the series and keep it going.”
Sunday’s win came with a slow fuse. Glasnow and Ray combined to throw 110 pitches in the first three innings, only 54 strikes. They walked seven, hit one batter and each threw a wild pitch.
But Glasnow allowed just one hit, minimizing the damage against him to one run. He found his way in the middle innings, retiring 11 consecutive Giants before giving up his second hit of the day, a one-out single in the seventh inning.
“Not much feel for anything early on. Kind of the whole game, to be honest,” Glasnow said. “I think it got better later, though. Just working with Ben (Rortvedt) back there, and I started to find my slider a little bit.
“I think this was, timing-wise, probably the worst I’ve felt all year. It was just trying to go out there and compete. … I think where I’m at since I got back from the IL, it’s been easier to kind of put it out of my head and go compete. If my stuff sucks, it’s kind of whatever. Just compete, try to get in the zone, get some weak contact it’s helpful.”
The Dodgers’ offense got its own reward for accepting things as they were. They loaded the bases twice in the second inning when Ray walked three batters but scored just once on a sacrifice fly by Kike’ Hernandez. In the third, Betts worked a bloop single into a run when Teoscar Hernandez followed with a hit, and Betts advanced on a fly ball and a ground out.
Their reward came in the fifth inning when Ray walked Betts to start the inning, then gave up a single to Teoscar Hernandez and an RBI double to Freeman.
That ended Ray’s day – but not the walks. Giants reliever Joel Peguero walked Tommy Edman to load the bases for Conforto. With the infield in, Conforto’s broken-bat grounder found its way into right field for a two-run single. Peguero balked in another run.
“We try to do that, I promise you, every single day. Sometimes it just doesn’t go that way,” Freeman said. “But (it’s been) consistently much better. Getting Robbie Ray to pretty much 100 pitches before the fifth inning. That’s more like us. Working counts, doing those kind of things. Just overall a really good day.”
Since coming up empty in a bases-loaded, no-outs situation in the second inning of Saturday’s game, the Dodgers have gone 4 for 6 with 9 RBIs in bases-loaded situations. In the two wins over the Giants, they took 37 at-bats with runners in scoring position and hit .351.
“I think just intent, quality of at-bat, winning pitches, using the whole field, not punching. I think all those things, you know it’s in there. We’ve seen it. Maybe not with the consistency we would’ve liked,” Roberts said. “But when you’re facing two really good arms (Logan Webb on Saturday and Ray on Sunday), and to see us do what we did tonight, it’s certainly encouraging.”
They just kept scoring, adding two more runs in the sixth inning on a two-out, two-run single by Miguel Rojas, another in the eighth on Conforto’s third single and third RBI and one more in the ninth on Edman’s RBI single.