In a typical scenario for any given regular season series, fans can expect to be treated to at most one true pitchers duel between two top tier arms in the league; however, this wasn't the case for the critical three game series fight between the Giants and Dodgers. Following a night where Madison Bumgarner and Zack Greinke squared off in a one run, low scoring battle, two new well established starters took the mound on Wednesday night. Last year's NL Cy Young and MVP winner Clayton Kershaw commanded the mound for the Dodgers while the Giants sent out recently acquired Mike Leake to oppose him. While the game weighed heavy on the shoulders of Leake to give the Giants a chance against dominant Kershaw, the Dodgers had little to lose as they already took the first two games in the series.
As expected, the pitchers dominated the first inning with each putting up three up, three down frames. In the second inning, the Dodgers once again struck first. Carl Crawford doubled in Justin Turner for the first run of the ball game. Since joining the Giants, Mike Leake has pitched well enough to win, but he's lacked run support on the offensive end. He is still searching for his first win as a San Francisco Giant and even that one run in the second seriously threatened to prolong his win drought; especially when facing a competitor like Clayton Kershaw.
Kershaw executed his role perfectly by shutting down the Giants almost entirely. It took a ground ball that snuck through third and short by Pagan to finally tie the game at one in the top of the sixth to score Tomlinson. In the opposite dugout, Mike Leake was also putting together a quality start. After the Giants were able to break the game even, the Dodgers immediately responded with a run of their own. The one real mistake Leake made cost him as Chase Utley gave his new team the lead with a home run in the sixth. Leake ended up making it through seven strong innings, but the one mistake will undoubtedly haunt him until his next chance.
After the RBI single from Pagan, the Giant offense slowed to a crawl and all of a sudden they found themselves down a run in the ninth. With Kershaw still in striving for a complete game, the Giants were desperate to avoid the sweep to their rivals. With two outs rookie Matt Duffy kept their hopes alive with a single and Buster Posey followed with his third hit of the night (all of which were singles). Keeping their faith in their ace, the Dodgers left Kershaw in the game to face Marlon Byrd. To put the nail in the coffin, Kershaw finished strong with a strikeout for his 15th of the game.
This is the worst possible outcome the Giants could have foreseen heading into this series. They finally get a shot to gain some ground for first place and they lose three straight to drop a whopping 6.5 games back. Although the two teams will meet again at the end of the month in San Francisco for a four game series, the Giants will need to play better baseball if they want to stay in contention. Granted they have dealt with solid pitching against them, but to be a playoff caliber team like they have in the past, they must find a way to win the close ones. All three of the games in the sweep were won by only one run. In many respects, losing a one run game is a thousand times more devastating than allowing the opposition to put up double digits on the board.
If the Giants hope to stay on track they will need to shake off this rough series and focus their attention on Colorado. Tomorrow's game features Ryan Vogelsong (9-10, 4.19 ERA) and Chris Rusin (4-7, 4.94 ERA). While it isn't exactly projected to be a pitchers duel, the Giants will need to gala anise their offense and make a comeback statement Thursday. The Dodgers on the other hand will look to increase their division lead by beating the San Diego Padres. Mat Latos (0-2, 6.05 ERA) will attempt to figure out his woes against Colin Rea (2-2, 5.95 ERA) and the disappointed Padres.