Giants have reversal of fortune in 3-1 win over Dodgers

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s been a rocky start for the San Francisco Giants.

But it had to feel good to come back to the friendly confines of Oracle Park and defeat their hated divisional rival and current back-to-back World Champions. The Giants scored three runs in the first inning and Landen Roupp along with the bullpen made it stand up after taking down the Los Angeles Dodgers 3-1 in the series opener on Tuesday evening.

All the excitement that was had during Spring Training with new manager Tony Vitello had eroded quickly with the three game sweep of the New York Yankees to begin the season. San Francisco was 9-13 after a 4-5 road trip and came home having won just three games at Oracle Park.

The starting rotation has been inconsistent with ace Logan Webb sporting a 5.40 ERA after three starts. Robbie Ray has been the best starter out of the rotation so far. The two offseason pick ups of Adrian Houser and Tyler Mahle haven’t been impressive so far.

Roupp gave the Giants a solid five innings with a hiccup in the fourth inning when he allowed four walks in the inning that led to the Dodgers only run of the game.

“I feel like I was locating (the ball) a lot, mixing all of the pitches,” said Roupp. “Just hitting spots when I needed to. Obviously in that fourth inning I kinda fell apart. Not really sure what happened, I just kinda felt like speeding up a little bit. I wish I could’ve gone six or seven (innings) but it worked out.”

San Francisco's bullpen, which came into the season with the team’s biggest question mark, held down the fort as five relievers tossed four shutout innings to preserve Roupp’s 106 pitch outing that included Roupp only giving up one hit while striking out seven. The Giants have the league’s best ERA since April 6.

Erik Miller helped shut down Los Angeles’ rally in the seventh by striking out Kyle Tucker to end the inning and then recorded the first two outs of the eighth inning. Ryan Walker had a drama free 1-2-3 ninth inning to finally give the Giants double digits win on the season.

“Before the season started, people were not giving us (the bullpen) a lot of credit,” said Miller regarding the outside criticism. “I mean everyone has the right to their own opinion. Obviously there wasn’t a lot of guys with experience pitching later in games, but as I’ve said if you have the stuff to do it, it doesn’t really matter.”

The other elephant in the room with San Francisco in its first 22 games is the lack of offensive production up and down the lineup. Even before the injuries to Harrison Bader that forced the Giants to bring up Drew Gilbert last week, the heart of the order of Rafeal Devers, Willy Adames, Heliot Ramos, and Matt Chapman haven’t produced the clutch hits and RBI as often as the team was relying on after such a good spring training.

On this evening, Devers’s single with the bases loaded brought home the Giants first run of the game. After Casey Schmitt’s sacrifice fly, Jung Hoo Lee came up with the clutch two-out hit that scored Chapman as San Francisco finally delivered some early offense for their starting pitcher.

“It’s always nice for a starting pitcher to have early run support like that. It just gives you the piece of mind to go out there and really attack the hitters and get quick out,” Roupp said.

The Dodgers Shohei Ohtani had a quiet game as he struck out twice against Roupp and despite extending his on-base streak to 53 games, was only 1-for-4 with the lone hit a weak infield single in where he just beat the throw to first from Adames.

Los Angeles starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto settled down after the first inning and gave his team seven good innings as he struck out seven and only walked two batters while giving up six hits.

Lee tried scoring from first base on a single as third base coach Hector Borg waved him home only to have Lee thrown out at the plate as he aggravated a quad injury he suffered this past weekend in Washington and was taken out of the game and replaced by Jerar Encarnacion.

The move by Borg was a head scratcher at best. However, Vitello defended his third base coach saying the team needed to be aggressive on the basepaths going up against the caliber pitcher of Yamamoto.

“You got a two out hit against one of the best pitchers on the planet, how many of those are you going to get,” Vitello said. ”The relay throw in is lobbed, and there’s kind of extra air under that. And so you could see it being kind of a play where the defense, who’s rarely sloppy, comes off looking sloppy if it worked out in our favor.”

This team is in desperate need of a spark to get the offense going as they were shut out the final eight innings. Would that spark be in the form of promoting first baseman/designated hitter Bryce Eldrige up to the big leagues? I think it’s worth the experiment to bring up the 21-year-old from Triple- A Sacramento Rivercats and see what he can do as the current lineup continues to struggle at the plate.

The Giants continue their homestand with two more games against the Dodgers and Ohtani on the mound tomorrow night against Mahle.