by Megan Garcia
The Dodgers are heading into the second half with a good taste in their mouths.
They pulled through with a series win against the Giants after a tough losing streak. The Dodgers beat the Giants 5–2 in 11 innings on Sunday at Oracle Park — and did it by battling another bout of adversity.
Their 2–0 slipped when Tanner Scott was tagged for a game-tying, two-run homer by Giants’ pinch hitter Luis Matos in the ninth. They needed three RBI singles by Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernández and Andy Pages in the 11th to come out on top.
The Dodgers enter the All-Star break with a 5 ½ game lead in the National League West.
https://medium.com/media/2c0cb08b48e25461cc3473b403c4cf3b/href
Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Giants’ left-hander Robbie Ray started the game with a pitchers’ duel. Yamamoto surpassed Ray with seven strong shutout innings in one of his best starts this season. The right-hander has made seven starts without allowing a run this season.
Yamamoto struck out seven batters, allowed three hits and issued two walks. He had a 30% called-strike-whiff rate on the 91 pitches (64 strikes) he threw against the Giants. The Giants struck out five times against Yamamoto’s splitter.
Opposing batters are batting .131 (17-for-130) against the pitch. Yamamoto, a first-time All-Star, has a 2.59 ERA through 19 starts that ranks fifth in the National League.
Freddie Freeman and Miguel Rojas supported Yamamoto’s scoreless start. Freeman, who went 2-for-5, hit a double in the fourth to put the Dodgers on the board.
https://medium.com/media/86a46b76139ddc6792e919da8ef3539c/href
Rojas extended the Dodgers’ lead to 2–0 when he hit a solo home run to left field against Ray. Rojas now has a .353 career batting average (6-for-17) against Ray with two homers.
The Dodgers will start the second half of the season against the Brewers at Dodger Stadium on July 18.
The Dodgers finish the first half strong in an extra-innings win over the Giants was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.