LOS ANGELES -- Yoshinobu Yamamoto retired all but six of the Giants hitters he faced, but half of them got to take a leisurely trot around the bases. The offense twice loaded the bases with one out, but came away with just one run to show for it. It was just that kind of night -- one that the Dodgers have experienced more than they would like over the past several games.
Yamamoto gave up a season-high five earned runs, the offense could not come up with the big hit and the bullpen turned a close game into a sizable deficit in back-to-back contests against the Giants on Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium. L.A. fell 6-2, losing its fourth straight game by four or more runs for the second time in franchise history and the first time since July 1-4, 1936.
Between that 1936 stretch and now, every other franchise has had at least four such streaks of four-plus games, so this is truly strange territory for the two-time defending World Series champions.
For the 15th time in the past 20 games, the Dodgers were held to four or fewer runs. Offense has been few and far between for much of the past three weeks, giving the pitching staff little room to breathe.
"When you're not just kind of putting up crooked numbers," manager Dave Roberts said, "it's just hard when the margin is thin. And right now, it's just been thin."
Yamamoto struck out eight batters across 6 1/3 innings, but he departed with the Dodgers trailing by one run after surrendering a trio of solo home runs to the Giants' eighth and ninth hitters. Yamamoto left runners on the corners with one out in the seventh inning for right-hander Blake Treinen, who allowed both to score.
After going eight up, eight down to open his eighth start of the season, Yamamoto left a 1-1 cutter over the plate for Giants backup catcher Eric Haase, who sent it sailing to the left-field bleachers. Yamamoto went on to handle the top two-thirds of San Francisco's ease, retiring six of his next seven batters before facing more trouble at the bottom of the order.
With two outs in the fifth inning, Harrison Bader jumped on a 1-2 splitter inside and launched it out to left field. Haase went back to back, driving a first-pitch four-seamer to left-center. Haase became the first player with a multihomer game off Yamamoto in the Majors.
"Overall, I think I was throwing pretty good pitches, except the three pitches I mislocated," Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda.
Yamamoto settled back down with a 1-2-3 sixth inning, but he gave up back-to-back singles to open the seventh. Treinen allowed one run to come home on a Drew Gilbert dribbler in front of the plate, then gave up another pair on a Jung Hoo Lee double.
The Dodgers held one-run leads after the first and third innings, but missed opportunities to push across more runs. Will Smith opened the scoring with a sacrifice fly, but the first inning ended with runners on first and second. Shohei Ohtani was a bright spot with his first homer since April 26, but his solo shot in the third marked the last time a Dodger crossed home plate. They got no runs out of loading the bases with one out in the eighth inning.
Even with the recent struggles, L.A.'s 208 runs scored are the sixth-most in the Majors. But the team is notably hitting just .205 with the bases loaded this season.
"Our margins, even on the offensive side, are just more finite," Roberts said. "You get a guy on second base to lead off an inning, and you’ve got to get him to third, and then you've got to get that point across. And we're just not doing that, on top of not slugging and not creating a bunch of traffic and stress."
Just as the Dodgers believe that Yamamoto and the bullpen will get back to being as sharp as they have been in previous weeks, they are confident that the big hits will come. But that doesn't make this tough stretch any more palatable.
"It's kind of just on us, just trying to be a little better and trying to get those runs in when we can, because, I mean, it's not easy with the pitching that you face in this league," Kyle Tucker said. "So whenever you have opportunities like that, you need to capitalize on it."