SAN FRANCISCO — This explosion had a long fuse.
The Dodgers and San Francisco Giants spent most of the afternoon in close quarters, went into extra innings and matched runs in the 10th.
In the 11th, though, the Dodgers put an emphatic end to it with five consecutive hits and scored seven times to beat the Giants, 14-7, Saturday.
“Just another Saturday night by the Bay,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts joked after the three-hour, 45-minute marathon.
The seven-run 11th inning was their largest since … a seven-run ninth inning to beat the Colorado Rockies 11 days ago.
“We needed every bit of it that we can get,” Roberts said. “We were down to our last arm and I was thinking about having Miggy Ro pitch that last inning. That’s kind of where we were at. Exhausting all of our arms feels a lot better when you win.”
Between them, the two teams combined to use 16 pitchers in Saturday’s extended affair, parading everyone but Lou Seal to the mound. The Giants chose their bullpen game. The Dodgers had theirs thrust upon them.
Starter Tyler Glasnow entered the game having held batters to a .179 average this season, the lowest among National League starting pitchers. The Giants went 7 for 14 against him in three innings, his shortest start with the Dodgers, and the major-league leader in strikeouts had just one Saturday.
Jorge Soler led off with a double in the first inning and scored on a sacrifice fly. Back-to-back doubles to start the second inning somehow didn’t yield a run when Matt Chapman tried to steal third base before Glasnow even started into his delivery.
But Glasnow couldn’t get any breaks in the third inning. The Giants batted around against him, the first time any team had done that to Glasnow in three years, and the Dodgers left the inning down 5-2.
“(My) feel was completely lost today from my warmups to the game,” Glasnow said. “It was just one of those days where I had no command of anything. I knew right away. It was just a rough day overall.
“I think today it was mechanical. From pitch one, it was just kind of, I think my release point is at one place and it’s at another place. It was just kind of all over the place today.”
One of the Dodgers’ first two runs came on a solo home run by Shohei Ohtani, his NL-leading 26th homer of the season, 9th in the past 12 games and 6th in the past eight.
“Shohei hit a homer tonight? That wasn’t yesterday?” Roberts joked hours later after the game.
The Dodgers responded to the Giants’ four-run inning with one of their own in the top of the fourth.
Nine Dodgers went to the plate. Miguel Rojas drove in one run with an infield single, Gavin Lux another with a single to right. Ohtani walked to load the bases and the Dodgers pushed across the tying run on an infield single by Will Smith and the go-ahead run on a bases-loaded walk of Freddie Freeman.
But the Giants tied the game again in the fifth inning on a broken-bat RBI single from Friday night’s walkoff hero, rookie second baseman Brett Wisely.
There were 11 runs scored on 15 hits in the first four innings. But the 4 o’clock start led to shadows creeping across the field in the middle innings and the game went into extra innings despite the Dodgers putting a runner in scoring position with one out in each of the seventh, eighth and ninth innings. The five at-bats after that runner reached scoring position — a double play grounder and four strikeouts.
“That was a long one. A tough one,” Rojas said after his three-hit, four-RBI day. “When the shadows came around the fifth, we knew it was going to be hard to score another run.”
It was harder for the Giants who managed just two runs on six hits in eight innings against the eight Dodgers relievers who followed Glasnow.
“Watching Tyler throw the baseball tonight I felt discouraged. He just didn’t have any command. He didn’t have any feel,” Roberts said. “Very uncharacteristic of what he’s done for us this year. For me, it’s kind of just forgetting about it and it was good to see everyone we called upon today in the ‘pen show up.”
Rojas drove in the free runner in the 10th inning with his third RBI single of the game. But the Dodgers didn’t add to that slim advantage and Daniel Hudson ran into trouble in the bottom of the 10th inning when he gave up an RBI double to the second batter he faced, David Villar.
That tied the game again and the Giants loaded the bases on an intentional walk and a chopped infield single that appeared to go off Heliot Ramos’ foot.
“I don’t think there’s any way that ball stays fair if it doesn’t hit his foot,” said Hudson who argued demonstratively — but the Dodgers didn’t have a challenge available.
“It’s hard. But – I hate using a cliche’, but it’s just one pitch at a time after that.”
Hudson struck out Patrick Bailey with the Dodgers playing a five-man infield and got Matt Chapman to pop out, sending it to the 11th.
That’s when Sean Hjelle got shelled.
After Ohtani was intentionally walked to put two runners on, Smith doubled to center field to break the tie. Freeman doubled on a ball misplayed by left fielder Luis Matos. Teoscar Hernandez singled. So did Chris Taylor. Jason Heyward tripled and Rojas made it a seven-run burst with a sacrifice fly.
“That was a good one, too. I’ll take them all,” Roberts said when reminded of the seven-run comeback in Colorado. “This one was certainly unexpected. You just don’t see that.”
