Good vibe fades as Matos is left in while Dodgers hit away
There used to be a vibe, a buzz, a jolt that shot through China Basin every game. Aside from the times when Barry Bonds was zeroing in on a milestone homer, that energy largely vanished the last couple of seasons.
It returned during the Cubs series this week and intensified with the Dodgers' first visit of the season Friday. A pumped-up sellout crowd of 40,447 filled the park for a holiday matinee and everybody, Dodgers and Giants fans alike, had to be thinking the same thing.
Why did manager Bruce Bochy let a reliever in his second big-league game stay on the mound long enough to get riddled for five runs in the sixth inning? That was the turning point in a 10-7 Los Angeles victory, a game the Giants led 2-0 and 5-2.
Bochy had a reasonable answer. He wanted to stay away from two achy relievers. Tyler Walker has been bothered by a sore quad and Keiichi Yabu reported tightness in his pitching shoulder after warming up in the fifth inning. So Bochy let Osiris Matos try to get three outs in the sixth inning.
The bottom line, though, was that Bochy had left-hander Alex Hinshaw ready in the bullpen but chose to let Matos, a right-hander, face left-handed Andre Ethier with two outs and the Giants leading 5-4. Ethier shot a two-run double past first base to give the Dodgers a 6-5 lead, which they extended to 8-5 on doubles by Russell Martin and Jeff Kent.
Only then did Bochy get Matos. The 23-year-old incurred his first big-league defeat, although his ERA remains 0.00 because Fred Lewis dropped an easy flyball in left field to start the five-run inning, making all of them unearned.
"Looking back, you wish you would have done something different," Bochy acknowledged. "It is a game you look back on. I just felt Matos was throwing the ball well. They hadn't hit the ball hard off him. It didn't work out for us."
Yabu and Walker do not have serious injuries, and Bochy said he doubted either will have to be disabled. Yabu said he could pitch tonight. Their health is a short-term issue that fed into a longer-term problem.
The Giants' young starters are not doing a good enough job economizing pitches and lasting deep into games. That forces Bochy to force more innings out of an equally young bullpen, which has struggled, one reason the Giants now have nine losses when they score six or more runs.
On Friday, reigning National League Player of the Week Jonathan Sanchez threw 110 pitches in five innings. He threw 44 in the third inning, when he lost the strike zone and walked in two runs. Sanchez has been Mr. Cool and did not blame his wildness on the bigness of the afternoon.
"It was just another game," he said. "It wasn't because it was the Dodgers. It was just a bad game."
Sanchez departed with a 5-3 lead. Nomar Garciaparra, the first batter to face Matos in the sixth, hit a sinking liner to left. Lewis easily reached the ball, but it clanked out of his glove for an error. Matos issued a one-out walk to Andy LaRoche and a soft run-scoring single by pinch-hitter Delwyn Young. Matos struck out Matt Kemp on three pitches before Ethier, Martin and Kent followed with three of the Dodgers' seven doubles, giving L.A. an 8-5 lead.
Lewis actually dropped another ball, a long fly to the warning track by James Loney in the seventh, but in a play sure to make the national highlights, Aaron Rowand, running behind Lewis, caught the ball with his bare hand before it hit the ground.
"I just had a bad day today," said Lewis, who earlier stole home for the second time in three games. "I'll come back tomorrow not holding my head down. Everybody makes mistakes. It was an error. It cost us the game. But I'll come back and tomorrow and play hard."
Actually, the Giants played plenty hard Friday. They built their 5-2 lead against Derek Lowe with some fine hitting, including two RBI hits by Rowand and two hits by Lewis. Down 9-5, the Giants rallied for a pair of runs in the eighth, but a Rich Aurilia double play thwarted the comeback. La Roche punctuated the Dodgers' fourth straight win with a leadoff homer in the ninth against Brian Wilson.
"We did everything we could to win that game," Sanchez said. "We scored a lot of runs. It was an easy game to win. They scored more runs than we did. That's all."
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