LOS ANGELES — At 9:53 p.m. last Friday, Patrick Bailey hit a walk-off grand slam off Tanner Scott to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers at Oracle Park. The Giants crept closer in the NL Wild Card race that night, and given how ridiculous the moment was, it wasn’t hard to picture them rolling all the way through September.
At 9:57 p.m. exactly a week later, Matt Chapman popped up a slider from Scott, clinching a 6-3 loss on a night that started with some promise. The Giants lost for the sixth time in seven games since the Bailey slam, and while they’re trying to avoid the math, the situation is bleak.
The late July/early August Giants returned at the worst possible time. Their dreams of an unlikely postseason run could be officially extinguished as early as Sunday afternoon, and the final week might be spent simply trying to finish above .500. Even that might be a stretch, given that they’re 76-78 and have two more games left at Dodger Stadium this weekend.
After the Bailey slam, manager Bob Melvin noted it has been a season of extremes. He smiled and said he hoped the Giants would ride the positive vibes as long as possible. Instead, they have found themselves on the other side.
The 2025 Giants might finish right around .500, but they don’t necessarily embrace the middle. When they win, they do so with walk-offs and offensive explosions. When they lose, well, the lows are pretty low.
The latest loss came when Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts went back-to-back, erasing a deficit and knocking Robbie Ray out of the game after a strong start to his night. Ray had outdueled Clayton Kershaw in the other lefty’s final start at Dodger Stadium, but the Dodgers quickly caught up after Kershaw was pulled in the fifth and showered with multiple standing ovations.
Ray has had some success against Ohtani, and his fastball has been firm in September even as he has struggled overall. He threw five of them at Ohtani in the fifth, the final one coming in at 95.5 mph and sticking to the corner. Ohtani casually flipped it into the seats.
“It was almost like he was trying to foul it off, and he hit it out to left several rows deep,” Melvin said.
Ray said he thought it was a good pitch. Ohtani just put a good swing on it.
“If it’s not down the line, it’s probably not a homer,” Ray said. “But he caught it deep enough to where he was able to get it over the wall.”
This is what the Giants will be up against for the rest of the decade, but the last time they were at Dodger Stadium, they tried to cut into the deficit. At the end of a trip in June, Buster Posey acquired Rafael Devers, who helped the team get back in the race in early September.
Devers, however, is still looking for a signature moment in orange and black, and he has struggled when the Giants needed him most. Since the win last Friday, Devers is 2-for-27 with 11 strikeouts. Four of them came Friday night, including one with two runners on in the ninth.
The stars have slumped over the past week, and given their lack of pitching depth, that has left the Giants with little hope. They weren’t even able to spoil Kershaw’s goodbye outing, despite a strong start.
Heliot Ramos was intent on being aggressive, and he nearly homered on Kershaw’s first pitch. Later in the at-bat, he smoked a ball 431 feet into the seats in left-center.
“The plan was to be aggressive and try to attack,” Ramos said. “We know the position we’re in. I was trying to attack.”
It was the right mentality, but the rest of the lineup would manage just one more run off Kershaw, who soaked in every moment. Long after the final out, which clinched a postseason spot for the Dodgers, he came back out to the mound to wave at fans and take pictures with his large family.
A couple hundred feet away, the Giants got dressed in a quiet clubhouse. Ramos said the goal was still to pile up as many wins as possible over the next week and see what happens. Ray said the team is still taking things one day at a time.
They are running out of days, though. That’s what happens when you waste an entire week in September.
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