Steve Webb
Game 45, 5/15/2024: Dodgers 1, Giants 4
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Sometimes you manage a baseball team with urgency. This was NOT one of those nights. Having already secured the series win and facing last year’s Cy Young contender Logan Webb, Dave Roberts and the Dodgers front office decided to call up 29-year old Elieser Hernandez to make his first big league start in over two years. And it went pretty much how you might have thought it would. It was a decent performance from Hernandez, but in the end, the Dodgers couldn’t generate much offense and lost their first game of the season to the Giants by a tally of 4-1.
The move to go with Hernandez rather than Tyler Glasnow serves a couple of purposes. First, it put in a day of rest for the entire staff in the middle of a stretch of thirteen straight games with no off day. And second, it avoided expending valuable resources on a game against one of the game’s premier pitchers. It’s not that the Dodgers didn’t want to win, it was that they were okay with a loss.
The game started promisingly enough, with the Dodgers loading up the bases in the top of the first. It looked like LA might sink their teeth into Webb early, as they had done so many times before. But it was not to be. The rally fizzled, and the Dodgers wouldn’t put a cleat on home plate until late in the game.
After he wriggled off the hook, Webb put up one of his best starts of the year. He went six innings and gave up just three singles in a scoreless outing. His night was aided by a home run robbery by centerfielder Luis Matos on a smash off the bat of Teoscar Hernandez in the top of the fourth. The Matos play was particularly surprising given the fact that he’s looked absolutely terrible in center in this series.
Webb’s performance allowed the Giants to use the best pieces of their pen to navigate the final three innings, and though the Dodgers would break through with a run in the eighth, the Giants’ four runs were more than enough for a victory in this one.
Still, Hernandez should be lauded for the effort. It could have easily blown up in his face. The fact that it didn’t is pretty much a win in this one. Hernandez gave up a two-run homer to Mike Yastrzemski in the third, and one more run on a Heliot Ramos double in the sixth, but other than that, a good night on the Oracle Park mound. His final line for the night: 6.0 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 3 K. In the losing effort, Mookie, Shohei, and Freddie all had multi hit nights, but the Dodgers were 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position and Ohtani got robbbed a couple of BS calls on third strikes during the game.
And now, the Dodgers (29-16) return home with a 3-3 roadtrip and a stable full of rested arms to power through the next week of baseball. Glasnow will take to the mound on Thursday against the Reds, who’ve been underperforming expectations so far this year. No pitcher announced as of yet for the Redlegs. We shall see. Thursday is Shohei bobblehead night, so make sure you get to the stadium well in advance of the 7:10 first pitch. Them bobbleheads are gonna go fast!
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