'A pretty deflating game': Giants can't snap out of 2nd-half funk

LOS ANGELES -- The Giants rode an elevator of emotion in the eighth inning at Dodger Stadium. Down when they were behind 4-2 with two outs in the top half. Up when a pair of clutch hits brought them even.

Down again when back-to-back home runs came from the highly unlikely (albeit familiar) Nick Ahmed, and the very likely Shohei Ohtani.

After being shut down in the ninth to finish off a 6-4 defeat on Thursday, the Giants had lost for the fifth time in seven games since the All-Star break and continued to descend in their playoff chase.

“A pretty deflating game,” manager Bob Melvin said.

The efforts to fend off defeat were initiated by David Villar -- called up from Triple-A Sacramento as Wilmer Flores returned to the injured list. Villar doubled, only to stay at second as Brett Wisely and Mike Yastrzemski fanned -- part of a 16-strikeout afternoon from Giants batters. But the combination of Michael Conforto’s double and Jorge Soler’s single tied it up.

“We made a nice push to get one of our key guys in the game,” Melvin said.

The key guy was Tyler Rogers. With one out, he faced Ahmed, released by the Giants just 15 days earlier. Rogers’ 2-2 pitch was below the zone, but Ahmed had enough lift to drive it over the left-center-field fence -- a Statcast-projected 396-foot piece of revenge, and his second homer of the season.

The next offering turned into an Ohtani skyrocket at a 46-degree launch angle that found its way around the right-field foul pole -- his 31st of the year.

Logan Webb, last year’s National League Cy Young Award runner-up and a first-time All-Star in 2024, was matched up against Clayton Kershaw, a three-time NL Cy Young Award winner with more accolades than just about every current Major League pitcher who was making his season debut.

Looking to return to the form that earned him recent recognitions, Webb is still searching. The Dodgers got nine hits, walked three times and scored four runs over 89 pitches (57 strikes) and five innings of work.

Webb’s past three outings have each yielded plenty of traffic. In each of those appearances, he has allowed at least eight hits. And in those three starts combined, he has allowed 15 runs. His earned run total for July (17) has already equaled what it was in June.

“Today was more about command to me,” Melvin said. “He usually doesn’t miss by wide margins. That’s pretty uncharacteristic of him.”

Of all the hitters in the Los Angeles lineup, Kiké Hernández presented the most difficulty. He got three hits and drove in the Dodgers’ first two runs. An opposite-field single in the second was followed by a one-out double in the fourth that erased a brief San Francisco lead.

“They were going the other way, hitting it to places where there was nobody playing,” Webb said. “That’s pretty much how the game went.”

Austin Barnes made the 2-2 tie last for two pitches, as he laced one off the glove of third baseman Matt Chapman and into left field to bring home Hernández.

Singles by Andy Pages and Gavin Lux to open the fifth put runners on first and third, and Pages scored on Jason Heyward’s double-play grounder.

There were certainly glimpses of Webb’s ace-like material, including a third inning in which he retired the Nos. 2-4 hitters on eight pitches. But for the NL leader with 135 1/3 innings, it’s not close to what he expects.

“I’m just not doing it,” Webb said. “I’ve pitched pretty [badly] the last three times that I’ve thrown. There’s no excuse for it.”

The final regular-season meeting between the two rivals was the lone encounter with Kershaw in his first appearance off the IL.

In the third inning, San Francisco strung together four straight hits and a pair of runs: a Soler single, a triple by Tyler Fitzgerald and singles from Heliot Ramos and Chapman. Kershaw found some of his vintage stuff to get three straight strikeouts and limit the damage.

After dropping two out of three to the Rockies in their first series out of the break and three of four to the Dodgers, San Francisco is struggling to keep pace in the Wild Card battle as the July 30 Trade Deadline looms.

“It’s not good enough right now,” Melvin said. “It’s not what we expected. We’ve got to go home and play better.”