Saturday was a planned “bullpen game” for the San Francisco Giants, whose rotation sports just two healthy established starters in Logan Webb and Jordan Hicks and has five pitchers — Blake Snell, Kyle Harrison, Keaton Winn, Robbie Ray and Alex Cobb — on the injured list.
It turned into an impromptu bullpen game for Dodgers, which was both surprising and disappointing considering they had ace Tyler Glasnow, who was 8-5 with a 2.88 ERA and a National League-leading 135 strikeouts and had thrown five innings or more in each of his first 16 starts, on the mound.
Glasnow was rocked for five runs and seven hits in an abbreviated three-inning start, leaving Dodgers relievers to cover the final six innings.
Not only was the bullpen up to the task, it worked overtime and got contributions from every arm, with eight pitchers combining to limit the Giants to one earned run over the final eight innings of a wild 14-7, 11-inning victory in front of a crowd of 39,663 at Oracle Park.
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“It was all hands on deck, really,” veteran right-hander Daniel Hudson said after the grueling 3-hour, 45-minute game. “We had to go get that one once we tied it up and took the lead [in the fourth inning]. We were all just focused on getting to the next guy.”
The Dodgers blew the game open with a seven-run rally in the 11th, but they wouldn’t have gotten there if Hudson hadn’t escaped a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the 10th.
The Dodgers had scored in the 10th off 6-foot-11 right-hander Sean Hjelle when Jason Heyward grounded out to first base, advancing automatic runner Chris Taylor to third, and Miguel Rojas blooped an RBI single to shallow right-center for a 7-6 lead.
Hudson, who gave up a two-run homer to Matt Chapman in Friday night’s loss, got Nick Ahmed to ground out to shortstop to open the bottom of the 10th, with automatic runner Brett Wisely holding at second, but pinch-hitter David Villar ripped an RBI double off the left-field wall to tie the score 7-7.
LaMonte Wade Jr. was intentionally walked, and Heliot Ramos dribbled a grounder to third for an infield single — the Dodgers thought the ball hit Ramos’ foot and should have been ruled foul but…