Blake Treinen gives up walk-off home run to Giants as 3 notable Dodgers streaks end
SAN FRANCISCO — Three Dodgers streaks came to a crashing halt with one sweet swing of the bat from Brett Wisely on Friday night, the San Francisco second baseman blasting a two-run home run to right field off reliever Blake Treinen in the bottom of the ninth inning to give the Giants a 5-3 walk-off win in Oracle Park.
The third homer of Wisely’s rookie season snapped a four-game win streak for the Dodgers, who had won 14 of 18 games against their division rivals in Oracle Park since 2022. Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani’s franchise-record streak of 10 consecutive games with an RBI came to an end.
And so did the peculiar and much-discussed streak of the Dodgers winning 24 straight games in which Miguel Rojas got a hit. They fell to 24-1 in such games after Rojas hit a fifth-inning single to spark a two-run rally.
Orlando Cepeda, the slugging first baseman nicknamed “Baby Bull” who was an 11-time All-Star over the course of his Hall of Fame career, dies at age 86.
“It’s over,” a dejected Rojas said afterward. “I just want to thank all the Dodgers fans out there and the people who have been watching. The support has been amazing. I’ve seen all the posts on social media. It was overwhelming. … But at the end of the day, this is part of the game. I enjoyed it. Hopefully we start another streak tomorrow.”
The Giants took a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the sixth on Matt Chapman’s two-run home run off Daniel Hudson, but the Dodgers rallied to tie the score off hard-throwing San Francisco closer Camilo Doval in the top of the ninth, buoying the spirits of Rojas and the Dodgers.
Andy Pages, after avoiding a 99.5-mph first-pitch cut-fastball at his head, smacked Doval’s second pitch, another 99.5-mph cutter, to center field, where Heliot Ramos raced to his right and got his glove on the ball with a lunge but couldn’t hold on.
The ball rolled to the wall for a leadoff triple, and Jason Heyward’s sacrifice fly to left tied the score 3-3.
“As soon as Pages hit the ball and it dropped and he got to third base, I knew we had a chance to win,” Rojas said. “All we needed to do was get back in the dugout, and with the ghost runner at second base [in extra innings], we’d have a good chance to score. Then we have Evan [Phillips] in the 10th … but it was a tough one there for Blake.”
Treinen walked Luis Matos on four pitches, only one of which was close to the strike zone, to open the bottom of the ninth. He threw four pitches, one cutter and three sliders, down and in to the left-handed-hitting Wisely, but the last one, on a 1-and-2 pitch, caught too much of the plate.
Wisely stroked a 401-foot homer over the tall wall in right to give the Giants their 31st walk-off home run against the Dodgers since the teams moved west from New York City in 1958.
“Honestly, I don’t even know where the pitch ended up that he hit,” Treinen said. “I threw two good sliders before that. Swung and missed on one. Seemed like the right pitch at that time. … It’s all about execution, and sometimes they execute better than we do.”
Treinen wasn’t the only reliever to get roughed up in a bullpen that entered with a 13-inning scoreless streak.
Hudson, who was 4-1 with a 1.71 ERA, three saves and 12 holds in his first 32 games, entered in the sixth with a 2-1 lead, but he left a 95-mph fastball middle-in to Chapman, who crushed a 414-foot homer to left-center. Ramos reached on first baseman Freddie Freeman’s error to open the inning.
“The leadoff walk by Blake wasn’t ideal,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Then he had count leverage [on Wisely] and left a pitch out over [the plate]. Huddy tried to go down and away to Chapman and just made a mistake with the heater. He made us pay. They can’t be perfect. It’s gonna happen.”
Landon Knack gave the Dodgers 4 ⅔ solid innings in which the rookie right-hander allowed one run and five hits, struck out seven and walked none to lower his ERA to 2.08 in 30 ⅓ innings over six starts this season.
With injured starters Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw all weeks away from potential returns, Knack, who made three starts after a mid-April promotion to the big leagues and one spot start for the Dodgers in May, will get an extended look in the rotation.
“I’m continuing to keep the same mindset,” Knack said. “I mean, you never know when your last outing is going to be up here. You just continue to take it day by day and continue to work on your craft.”
The Giants could fill a rotation with the five starters they have on their injured list — Blake Snell, Robbie Ray, Alex Cobb, Kyle Harrison and Keaton Winn — and their starting staff is so thin they will go with bullpen games on Saturday and Sunday.
One of the few quality starters still standing, Logan Webb, gave his team a quality start, limiting the Dodgers to two earned runs and five hits in seven innings, striking out six and walking three to lower his ERA to 3.12. Webb also started double plays on comebackers in the fifth and seventh innings.
“His ball just moves all over the place, and it’s hard to square up,” Roberts said of Webb. “He was in a good rhythm … he’s one of the better pitchers in the game.”
The Dodgers managed only two infield singles in the first four innings before scoring twice in the fifth, a rally that began with a Rojas single to right field and a Gavin Lux RBI double to the wall in left-center.
Lux took third on a wild pitch, Cavan Biggio struck out looking. The hot-hitting Ohtani was intentionally walked ahead of struggling catcher Will Smith, who was mired in a two-for-36 slump (.056) before lining an RBI single to center.
The Dodgers have become adept at unlocking the potential of relievers cast off by other teams, with Yohan Ramírez, Anthony Banda and Michael Petersen being the latest examples.
The Giants got one run back in the bottom of the fifth when Matos hit a one-out solo homer to left-center off Knack. Wisely singled to right and took third on Jorge Soler’s two-out single to right.
Left-hander Anthony Banda replaced Knack and got LaMonte Wade Jr. to ground to second, ending the inning, but two of the Dodgers’ best right-handers, Hudson and Treinen, gave up two-run homers, each one electrifying a sellout crowd of 40,052.
“They’re sort of in and out as far as how they’re playing, but they bring their best against us,” Roberts said of the Giants (39-42). “You can just see the emotion with Webb and some of the plays they made, some of the at-bats. We somehow bring out the best in every team, but that’s what we signed up for.”
Rehab report
Third baseman Max Muncy, out since May 15 because of an oblique strain, joined the team in San Francisco and has begun swinging the bat, hitting soft-toss and balls off a tee. Muncy was moved to the 60-day injured list last week and won’t be eligible to return until after the All-Star break, but he at least appears to be making progress.
“Guys on the IL typically don’t travel with us, but in this particular case, it’s three days, and our hitting guys can put some eyes on him,” Roberts said. “The next step is hitting on the field. He’s taking grounders, throwing, running, so at some point in time, he’ll take live batting practice, do a simulated game and from there, go on a rehab [assignment].”
Muncy aggravated the injury when he started hitting in the cage two weeks after going on the IL and did not swing a bat for almost a month, so the Dodgers are not about to rush him back.
“It’s open-ended,” Roberts said, when asked whether Muncy will be ready to return when his 60-day IL stint is up. “We’ll see how he progresses. We’ve already had one setback, we don’t need another.”
Muncy started to ramp up his activity two weeks after the injury but had a setback and had to shut down his attempts to swing a bat. He has started that process again this past week, hitting off a tee and “flips” from coaches.
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