BOX SCORE
LOS ANGELES — First place lasted only 24 hours.
A night after moving into a share of the division lead, the Giants watched the vaunted Los Angeles Dodgers lineup put on a show and had their usual at-bats against a future Hall-of-Famer who is on his last legs, but still always finds a way in rivalry games.
Clayton Kershaw threw seven shutout innings, cruising after the Dodgers put six runs on Landen Roupp in the first two, and the Dodgers won 11-5 on the second night of this series in Los Angeles. The outing was Kershaw’s best in two years, but fit right in with the rest of his career against the Giants.
Kershaw will one day join Justin Verlander in Cooperstown, but it wasn’t a stretch to say the Giants held the edge coming into the game. Kershaw entered with a 4.35 ERA in five starts and Roupp found his stride in recent weeks, but this one was a laugher from the start.
Roupp was knocked out in the second and the rest of the night became about preserving the bullpen. By the bottom of the eighth, backup catcher Logan Porter was on the mound for the Giants.
The Dodgers turned to their own position player — Kiké Hernandez — in the ninth with an 11-run lead, but he made a mess of the inning despite being used regularly in blowouts this season. Casey Schmitt hit a grand slam for a second straight night after Hernandez walked three and an error by Miguel Rojas kept the Dodgers from recording the 27th out and forced manager Dave Roberts to turn to Anthony Banda, an actual reliever. Banda got Jung Hoo Lee to ground out.
Still That Dude (Against the Giants)
Kershaw had not thrown more than five innings since coming off the IL and had completed six just once over the past two years, but he needed just 70 pitches to record the first 18 outs on Saturday. The legendary curveball is still there, although now the fastball sits at 88 mph.
Even with diminished stuff, Kershaw is still a lefty, and the Giants have struggled against them all year. He also is an all-time Giant Killer.
The start was his 59th against the Giants, and he entered with a 2.04 ERA in 397 1/3 innings against the orange and black. He now has 27 career wins against the Giants and has thrown at least seven innings against them an astounding 37 times. This was his 10th time throwing at least seven shutout innings against the Giants.
A Short Walk
With Verlander due back next week, the Giants will have to pull one of their young starters from the rotation. Roupp had the strongest hold on a spot heading into this series, but he had a brutal night at Dodger Stadium.
The young right-hander had an equal number of walks (five) and outs recorded, and he was charged with six earned. It could have been worse, but Spencer Bivens entered and stranded a pair. Roupp’s ERA jumped from 3.29 to 3.99 after the shortest start of his career.
Roupp was so good in May that the Giants won’t stress too much about one short start, especially one that came against this Dodgers lineup. But there is a conversation to be had at some point in July about his innings total. He threw 76 2/3 total innings across three levels last year but reached 70 on Saturday night.
The Sho
Logan Webb held Shohei Ohtani in check on Friday night. On Saturday, Ohtani opened the game with a leadoff homer, his 24th of the year. He later lunged across the plate and somehow yanked a Tristan Beck curveball over the wall in right to get to 25.
The only takeaway here is that the Giants should have upped their offer to a clean $1 billion.
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