LOS ANGELES — The Giants have allowed the fewest home runs in MLB this season, but not because of anything they’ve done this weekend in Dodger Stadium.
In the series opener, Mookie Betts’ three-run shot broke an eighth-inning stalemate. The next night, Cody Bellinger’s grand slam sunk the Giants again in the eighth. And Saturday, the Dodgers tacked three more solo shots — from All-Stars Mookie Betts, Trea Turner and Freddie Freeman — on to their already overwhelming weekend résumé.
The Dodgers have cracked six home runs in three games this series. After winning five of six heading into the All-Star break, the Giants (48-46) have now lost three consecutive nights in Dodger Stadium, each defeat bringing them a new season-high deficit behind their rivals in the National League West.
The 4-2 loss came despite the Giants’ mini ninth-inning rally and as their star counterparts in City Connect blue showed out.
In addition to the standings setback, veteran infielder Evan Longoria exited in the third inning with a right hamstring strain. Losing Longoria would be a long-term blow even more significant than a single defeat in a division already lost.
“There’s no quit in this team,” Longoria said earlier this weekend.
Trending the wrong direction while racing toward the Aug. 2 trade deadline, the Giants now need to prove their veteran right on that front.
Through six innings, against starter Julio Urías, the Giants had as many hits as the Dodgers had home runs.
Betts and Turner — the All-Star duet at the top of Los Angeles’ lineup — took Wood deep for back-to-back solo home runs in the third inning.
Wood hadn’t allowed multiple homers in an entire game this season, let alone in an inning.
“That’s an All-Star team over there,” Logan Webb said after his Friday start.
The two solo shots Wood allowed came one inning after the southpaw struck out the side looking. Wood fooled Hanser Alberto with a sinker, capped a 10-pitch battle against Max Muncy with a slider, and froze Trayce Thompson with another two-seamer.
In fact, Wood had struck out five straight Dodgers before surrendering the twin homers.
Wood struck out six through four innings, but ran his pitch count up to 90 after four frames. He walked Gavin Lux to start the fifth, and there was no chance the Giants were going to let their starter face Betts a third time. Julio Urías, meanwhile, needed only 66 pitches to get through five scoreless innings; he allowed just two hits through five, both of which came off Austin Slater’s bat.
Two walks and a hit-by-pitch loaded the bases in the fifth for the Dodgers, but Jarlin García stranded three with one pitch. Earlier in the week, he walked the batter he was assigned to get. The left-on-left specialist wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
Slater reached for a third time in the sixth and Darin Ruf walked to put two on, but Urías stoned David Villar — in for Longoria — to end the frame.
And García couldn’t continue his left-on-left prowess in the sixth. A Bellinger single and Gavin Lux triple added onto the earlier Dodger homers.
The Giants put runners on the corners against reliever Caleb Ferguson in the seventh, but a two-out rally never surfaced. All 17 of the Dodgers’ runs in the series, to that point, had come with two outs.
Then Freddie Freeman broke the streak by further worsening San Francisco’s home run-suppression tendency. His 391-foot shot off John Brebbia put the Dodgers up by four on the scoreboard and 15.5 in the standings.