Dodgers take early lead, beat Giants to even series

SAN FRANCISCO — The odor of ail fries hadn’t adjacent begun its nightly improvement from enticing to cloying. Late arrivers to McCovey Cove were inactive paddling. The ‘Beat LA’ chants ne'er got started.

Trea Turner led disconnected the crippled with a location tally and the Dodgers scored 3 times successful the archetypal inning, ne'er trailing successful a 6-1 triumph implicit the San Francisco Giants Saturday nighttime astatine Oracle Park.

The 2 rivals are unneurotic again, tied atop the NL West with the champion grounds successful baseball. They volition conscionable for the last clip this play connected Sunday — unless the postseason (or postseason seeding) demands an encore.

“It doesn’t substance if I made 5 errors yesterday, had 5 strikeouts oregon deed 5 location runs. It don’t matter,” said Trea Turner whose leadoff location tally came connected the heels of his throwing mistake that ended Friday night’s 11-inning loss. “The adjacent time is simply a caller day. Nothing is promised, occurrence oregon failure. You’ve got to rotation with it. For maine I conscionable effort to determination connected arsenic speedy arsenic possible, whether it’s bully oregon bad.

“We won today. We mislaid yesterday. So contiguous is simply a amended time than yesterday.”

Their rotation depleted by wounded and illness, the Giants turned to a bullpen crippled for Saturday’s matchup. They were connected to their 2nd pitcher earlier retiring 2 Dodgers.

After Turner’s leadoff homer, Max Muncy struck retired — 1 of 3 for him successful the crippled and portion of a 19-for-101 (.188) slump since the commencement of August.

But Mookie Betts and Justin Turner drew back-to-back walks past pulled disconnected a treble steal, putting Betts successful presumption to people connected Corey Seager’s sacrifice fly. AJ Pollock doubled Turner successful to marque it 3-0 aft the archetypal six batters of the game, astir matching the Dodgers’ mean implicit the erstwhile 14 games (3.4 runs per game) arsenic the discourtesy slumped.

“It’s beauteous obvious. You conscionable look astatine our vocation numbers individually and what we’re susceptible of,” Trea Turner said. “When you’ve got a batch of guys successful the lineup that tin get connected basal and thrust the shot astatine the aforesaid time, you should beryllium capable to enactment a batch of runs up. When you play bully teams you’re going to look bully pitching and sometimes it doesn’t spell your way. But contiguous I deliberation was a representation of what we tin bash for the remainder of the year.”

They’ll person to bash it without a cardinal constituent for astatine slightest the adjacent 2 weeks.

Pollock was picked disconnected by Giants lefty Jarlin Garcia and stumbled arsenic helium tried to descent into third. Pollock had to beryllium helped disconnected the tract and near the crippled with a strained close hamstring. He missed 3 weeks earlier this play with a near hamstring injury.

“I don’t privation to speculate. I cognize that it wasn’t good. Obviously it’s a immense loss,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “From what I’m proceeding aboriginal on, it’s a Grade 2 strain. … I deliberation astatine the minimum it’s going to beryllium a mates weeks.”

Given a pb to protect, Dodgers starter Julio Urias spent the adjacent six innings giving the Giants anticipation — past taking it away.

The Giants had runners successful scoring presumption successful 5 of the archetypal six innings against Urias but pushed conscionable 1 tally crossed connected a two-out treble by Buster Posey successful the archetypal inning.

Urias stranded runners astatine 2nd and 3rd that inning, astatine 2nd successful the 3rd inning, 2nd and 3rd again successful the 4th and 2nd successful the fifth.

Urias near the game, appropriately enough, with different runner successful scoring presumption successful the sixth — Posey aft his 3rd deed of the game. Alex Vesia took attraction of that, stranding Posey erstwhile helium struck retired Mauricio Dubon to extremity the inning.

The Dodgers had conscionable 3 hits aft the archetypal inning — though 1 was a solo location tally by Seager.

But the aboriginal pb held up due to the fact that the Giants near 9 runners connected basal successful the crippled (26 successful the archetypal 2 games of the series), 7 successful scoring presumption successful the archetypal six innings Saturday alone.

The quality to strand runners has been a cardinal thread successful the Dodgers’ pitching staff’s occurrence implicit the past 5 weeks. Since the commencement of August, Dodgers pitchers person held opposing batters to a stingy .106 mean (24 for 226) with runners successful scoring position.

The Dodgers person besides held the National League leaders successful location runs (the Giants) without 1 successful the archetypal 2 games of this series.

“It’s surely executing pitches erstwhile it gets hot, erstwhile they request to marque pitches,” Roberts said. “Like I’ve said — Mark Prior, Josh Bard, Danny Lehman, Connor McGuiness bash specified a fantastic job, the run-prevention guys. And evidently with the 2 catchers, Austin and Will … they’ve done a fantastic job.

“Where we’ve benignant of been successful this small funk offensively, being capable to forestall runs and surely with runners successful scoring presumption has been the cardinal to our occurrence truthful far.”