SAN FRANCISCO — From the very first pitch out of James Paxton’s left hand Sunday afternoon, the Giants jumped on the Dodgers starter and didn’t let up until they had secured a series win in their archrivals’ final visit to the shores of McCovey Cove this season.
Leading off the bottom of the first, Jorge Soler whacked the first pitch he saw off the center field wall, chugged into second base, and the Giants were off to the races in a 10-4 rout.
Taking two of three games this week at Oracle Park, the Giants won their first series against the Dodgers since sweeping them in Los Angeles from June 10-12, 2022. They play four times at Dodger Stadium in the Giants’ first road trip after the All-Star break and don’t meet again for the rest of the season.
On Sunday, the Giants needed two things and got them both.
Not naming a starter until hours before first pitch, Spencer Bivens gave them effective length to spare their bullpen a day after they exhausted seven pitchers in an 11-inning loss. And an early and unrelenting assault from their lineup ensured he could pitch without pressure against the Dodgers’ intimidating order.
The Giants loaded the bases twice and built a 9-0 lead by the time the Dodgers came to bat for a fifth time against Bivens, who hadn’t pitched more than three innings at any level this season but had no trouble cruising through five frames against a 1-2-3 trio that had combined for 56 home runs.
Limiting the Dodgers to one run — courtesy of Chris Taylor’s solo shot in the fifth inning — on four hits, Bivens needed only 60 pitches to earn his second major-league win. He finished with only three strikeouts but sure picked his spots to deploy his swing and miss stuff, making Shohei Ohtani his victim not once but twice.
Against Paxton, who was charged with nine runs over four innings, it was the Giants’ lineup that looked powerful.
After scoring seven runs on 13 hits in Saturday’s loss, they put up a 10-spot on another 16 hits to prevail in the series finale. All nine members of their starting lineup had reached base at least once by end of the fourth inning, and they got run-scoring knocks from six different players.
Back-to-back extra-base hits from Patrick Bailey and Matt Chapman in the fourth broke the game open, with Bailey doubling home two runs and Chapman driving him in from second as well as himself with a two-run homer that sailed just clear of the left-field wall and foul pole.
Ten of the Giants’ hits went for extra bases, matching their season-high, including multiple doubles from Bailey, Soler and Heliot Ramos, providing ample cushion for Bivens in his first major-league start.
Bivens’ winding baseball journey has taken the 30-year-old right-hander from France to West Virginia and almost out of the sport entirely until the Giants signed him out of independent ball last fall. On Sunday, he found himself standing 60 feet, 6 inches from the sport’s preeminent slugger with a man on second base.
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Getting ahead on a pair of changeups, Bivens buried the next two pitches in the dirt before climbing the ladder, getting Ohtani to swing through a 95 mph fastball above the zone for strike three to end the inning, stranding Enrique Hernandez at second after one of the Dodgers’ only two hits in Bivens’ first four frames.
As if to show it was no fluke, he needed only three pitches to strike out Ohtani in their next battle, getting two quick swings and misses on a pair of fastballs before coaxing a third empty cut with a sweeping slider. An animated Bivens spun, shouted and punched the air in celebration.
It was the end of his day, shown moments later smiling while chatting with Melvin in the third-base dugout.
Up next
The Giants will spend their day off in Atlanta recuperating their pitching staff before beginning the first leg of their final road trip before the All-Star break with three games against the Braves. Right-handers Hayden Birdsong (0-0, 5.79), Jordan Hicks (4-4, 3.36) and Logan Webb (6-6, 3.12) will get the ball against righty Reynaldo Lopez (6-2, 1.70), lefty Chris Sale (10-3, 2.79) and righty Charlie Morton (5-4, 3.89) before the Giants head to Cleveland for three games against the Guardians.
