It was a routine groundball, hopping along innocently enough to be toting an Easter basket. Even from his shifted position three steps deep on the outfield grass, Donovan Solano had no reason to rush or panic.
He let it clank off his glove for an error.
The very next pitch: another diving changeup from Logan Webb, another grounder right at Solano.
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Another error.
“The first one, the ball took a funny bounce on me,” Solano said, “and the second one, I was still thinking about the first error.”
There was a meeting on the mound so well attended that someone should’ve brought a coffee urn. Solano, at a jog, was the last to join the circle. Wilmer Flores told him to let it go and be ready for the next grounder. Webb vowed to supply him with one. The Giants led 3-1 in the second inning, but these were the Dodgers, the bicycle thieves of the National League. It only takes one broken link in the chain for them to seize an opportunity and speed away.
And this was Webb on the mound, who seemingly has dealt with more errors and defensive letdowns behind him than any other Giants pitcher last season. When presented with challenges to limit the damage, he wasn’t always up to the task.
“We were all like, ‘Hey, Donny, you’re going to get another one,'” Webb said. “That kind of stuff happens. With the pitcher coming up, you knew he was probably going to (squeeze) bunt. … If he did bunt and get it down, so what? It’s 3-2 and just get back to that next hitter.”
Julio Urías did get the bunt down to make it a one-run game. But Webb stayed true to his pledge while limiting the damage. He got Gavin Lux to ground out to Flores at first base to end the inning, Solano more than redeemed himself by smacking a two-run home run in the third and the Giants’ collaborative offense spent the rest of the night using the basepaths as a freeway interchange in an 11-6 victory at Dodger Stadium.
It was a night of many happy returns. The Giants activated Webb (sore shoulder) from the injured list before the game and sent him to the mound with a hard cap of 70 pitches. He needed only 62 of them to exceed expectations while completing five impressive innings. The club also activated Flores (hamstring), who went 3-for-3 and hit singles that started a pair of two-run rallies.
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Evan Longoria hit his eighth home run, Steven Duggar roped a two-run double and seven hitters collected an RBI as the Giants scored their highest output in a game at Dodger Stadium in eight years. It was a much different result against Urías than last Sunday in San Francisco, when he struck out 10 and took a perfect game into the sixth inning.
This time the Giants tenderized Urías, who allowed a career-high 11 hits and matched career worsts in runs (seven) and earned runs (six) in five innings. The Giants handed the 24-year-old left-hander his first loss in a start against them since the very first time they faced him in 2016.
They did it pretty much the same way the Dodgers jumped on Anthony DeSclafani last weekend in San Francisco: with ambush swings and zone discipline.
“We were really aggressive with pitches in the zone,” Flores said. “With good pitchers, you can’t just let them throw that first strike to you. We attacked and it paid off.”
It’s clear that discipline has become a core tenet of the Giants’ hitting culture — and it’s a trait shared by the two other behemoths in the NL West. The Padres, Dodgers and Giants rank 1-2-3 in the major leagues when it comes to lowest swing percentage on pitches outside the zone. No team in baseball has made a greater year-over-year improvement than the Giants, who are chasing at a rate of 23.1 percent after chasing 28.5 percent last year. And last year’s percentage was a significant improvement from their chase rate of 31.2 percent in 2019.
Succinctly put, in two years, the Giants have gone from being one of the least disciplined hitting teams in the league to among the elite. And that’s good since they exchange lineup cards with those other two elite teams all the time.
It was almost uncanny how good their at-bats were against Urías. While doing damage in the first four innings, they swung at 34 of 42 pitches in the zone (81 percent) and took 23 of 32 pitches outside the zone (28.1 percent). Against a less disciplined team, a pitcher like Urías might scheme his way through a game without his best command by relying on hitters to get themselves out. The Giants didn’t provide him that escape route.
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So yes, in case you were fretting about this last weekend, the Giants can face a Dodgers starting pitcher and not be thoroughly overmatched.
Sometimes, they can take such control of a game that a manager can conserve resources to fight another day.
“Crooked numbers, big innings, they don’t just win baseball games,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said. “They also allow you to save your bullpen. They allow you to not overuse your leverage relievers. Ultimately, I think you can really take control of the momentum.”
The Giants probably didn’t count on preserving so many of their leverage relievers Saturday. They planned for Scott Kazmir to take the baton from Webb at some point — probably after three innings or so — and knew they would have to use the bullpen to piece together the rest. So it was foundational to get a full five out of Webb, who farmed groundballs with his changeup and induced whiffs on 11 of the 13 swings the Dodgers took against his slider.
“We were going to be pretty disciplined here, coming off the shoulder injury with one of our young pitchers that we’re going to be depending on for a really long time,” Kapler said.
And yet … “It was tempting because it was one of the better performances I’ve seen from him. It was exactly what we look for: a lot of strikes, a lot of changeups — and that part was not as important because the pitch mix was good. He really executed in the zone and just below it as well.”
“The main thing was getting ahead with the changeup and offspeed pitches,” Webb said. “It set up everything else. I just rolled with it. It felt like it kept getting better each inning.”
The Giants, after jumping the Dodgers for second place in the NL West, will seek to keep momentum. They’ll send their Opening Day starter, Kevin Gausman, to the mound with a fresh bullpen against Clayton Kershaw in the hopes of taking three of four in this series.
When you’re ahead of your archrivals in the standings, there’s no need to chase.
(Photo of Mike Yastrzemski: Mark J. Terrill / AP)
