Giants win at Dodger Stadium, slam their way into a share of NL West lead

LOS ANGELES — Matt Chapman tried to make himself useful Friday afternoon.

He’d just received good news following an examination with Dr. Steven Shin that his sprained right hand would heal on its own, and based on the rapid rate of recovery thus far, it might be possible to begin baseball activities in another week. Until then, though, Chapman has to keep his hand in a splint. Even as a mere dugout cheerleader, he is incapable of applause. And so, motivated by obligation or amusement or boredom or all of the above, Chapman trotted to the Dodger Stadium outfield during batting practice, chased fly balls with pitchers Robbie Ray and Justin Verlander — that’s $63 million on shag duty — and flipped them back to the bucket with his glove hand.

The previous night, Chapman sought to retrieve something even more important when he took aside his replacement at third base, Casey Schmitt, after a fielding error in the ninth inning set up the Colorado Rockies’ walk-off victory at Coors Field.

“I just told him, ‘Dude, I’ve had that happen to me plenty of times,’” Chapman told reporters Friday afternoon. “I’ve made errors this season. I’ve had some balls that I probably thought I could have made that I didn’t make. But that happens, you know? It’s baseball, and you haven’t been playing third base every single day. You’ve still got to get into the rhythm of playing third base.”

Then Chapman added a positive assessment: “We need him, and he’s going to be a big part of our team, even when I come back. So I think that this is good experience for him. (Thursday’s loss) sucks. But I think he’s in a good spot, and the way he’s swinging the bat, I think he’s going to start to really come into his own offensively.”

The moment came quickly Friday night, and it propelled the Giants into a share of first place in the NL West.

In a game billed as pitching theater between Dodgers right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Giants ace Logan Webb, Schmitt shouted from the balcony. He launched a grand slam in the third inning that landed halfway up the stands in the left field pavilion. Webb leaned on his new cutter to hold a familiar and formidable lineup to two hits over seven innings and the Giants won 6-2 while hushing a sellout Dodger Stadium crowd.

There is no predicting where the Giants will finish this season. It’s probably more encouraging than satisfying that they own a 41-29 record and a share of first place after 70 games. But who expected club president Buster Posey’s team to be on an even footing with the defending World Series champions this deep into the season?

If the epic NL West race in 2021 taught the Dodgers anything, then they know to assume at their own peril that the Giants will fade away.

“It’s one of the best rivalries in sports and you could feel that today,” Webb said. “The crowd, the energy in the dugout, everything was kind of amplified. I feel that at home when I face them, I feel it here.

“It’s always fun to come to LA and beat them.”

The Giants only accomplished that once last year. They were 1-5 at Dodger Stadium and lost nine of 13 in the season series to their archrivals. It’s a function of the balanced schedule that the two rival clubs had to wait until mid-June to face each other for the first time. If this is a yardstick series, it’ll provide an imprecise measurement because neither team is fully operational. The Dodgers have more sore arms (14 pitchers on the injured list) than a Grecian polyreme. The Giants are missing Gold Glove winners at third base (Chapman) and behind the plate (Patrick Bailey).

However, if some games serve as tone setters, then the Giants struck an important chord Friday night.

Schmitt batted with two outs and the bases loaded after Jung Hoo Lee and Heliot Ramos drew walks and Yamamoto didn’t appear eager to challenge Wilmer Flores, who is among the NL leaders with 51 RBIs. Schmitt watched from the on-deck circle and took mental notes as Flores walked on five pitches.

“It felt like they were trying to put Flo on to get to me in that situation,” said Schmitt, who swung the bat like a 5-wood and made pure contact with a 1-1 splitter at the bottom of the zone. “So for me to come through was big for me personally as well as putting the team up.”

Was Schmitt offended?

“I mean, who wouldn’t, you know?” he said. “I understand the game, but the inner competitor in me, I really wanted that at-bat.”

If the Giants were at full strength, there’s no way Schmitt would have been in the lineup against a tough right-hander like Yamamoto. Over parts of three seasons, the Giants have picked spots for him against left-handed starters for good reason. Schmitt has a .722 OPS against left-handers and a .568 OPS against right-handers. He entered Friday’s game with a .107 average (3 for 28) against right-handed starting pitchers.

But within the organization, Chapman isn’t the only fan in Schmitt’s corner.

“Look, Casey has the ability to be an everyday player somewhere, and the bat is a part of that,” Giants manager Bob Melvin said. “He’s not just a good defender at third (who’s) working hard at other positions. There’s a lot of bat there. When he first came up to the big leagues, it looked like he was there to stay. There’s some home run power, he can hit the ball the other way. When he has a good game plan, righty or lefty, I don’t think it really matters to him when he’s swinging well.”

Schmitt reacted to his home run like he was expecting to hit it. He posed in the box, made a slow circuit of the bases and didn’t break into a smile until he began smacking his teammates’ hands on his way to the dugout.

“I love Casey,” Webb said. “I’ve been a big fan of his for a long time. It’s cool to see him shine. And … he hit that very far. A grand slam in this place quiets the whole crowd.”

Webb kept the fans muffled while holding down the league’s most imposing lineup. The Dodgers only got two runners into scoring position against him and the swings didn’t get much better the second and third time through the order. The Dodgers undoubtedly had scouting reports on Webb’s new cutter but might have been caught off guard when he threw the pitch 29 times — he’d never thrown as many as 20 in a previous start — and located it inside to left-handed batters to set up backdoor sliders.

On a night that featured a tight zone from plate umpire Adam Beck, Webb twice struck out Shohei Ohtani on called pitches. The top four Dodgers hitters — Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith — were 0 for 8 with a walk and four strikeouts against Webb. Combined with tidy work from Tyler Rogers and Ryan Walker, it marked just the second game all season in which the Dodgers didn’t receive a hit from the top four spots in their lineup.

“They’ve got some guys with 30 and 40 at-bats against him — guys that know him really well, know how they want to attack him, some guys with success off him,” Melvin said of Webb. “Now, all of a sudden, you’re seeing two completely different pitches and the ability to pitch inside more. There were different swings from them today. That’s just how you get better as you go along. You come up with some new wrinkles. … To be able to do things differently like that is a credit to a guy trying to get better.”

Willy Adames opened the scoring with his third home run in four games, taking a tension-free swing that resulted in a rare opposite-field drive that carried into the right field pavilion. Catcher Andrew Knizner added a solo shot in the eighth for his first hit as a Giant, although his most impressive contribution was forming a cohesive battery with Webb while catching him for the first time.

Knizner hadn’t even caught one of Webb’s side sessions before Friday night and was doing extra homework between defensive innings, reviewing swings and pitch locations on an iPad in the Giants’ dugout. He had his head in the screen in the third inning when he heard a loud crack and saw Schmitt staring at his handiwork.

“I looked up and I saw Schmitty just kind of pimping it … subtle,” Knizner said, smiling. “Subtle but swaggy.”

(Photo: John McCoy / Getty Images)