LOS ANGELES -- On the second night at Dodger Stadium, Tyler Fitzgerald put his name alongside the likes of Barry Bonds and Willie Mays in the Giants record books.
His homer in the second inning gave him a blast in five consecutive appearances, a feat no Giant has accomplished since Bonds in 2004. Mays did it, too, but not as a rookie. Fitzgerald is the first rookie in franchise history to homer in five straight.
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You would think, then, that just one thing would be on Fitzgerald's mind when he came up with two runners on in the ninth inning. The Giants trailed by four runs heading into the inning, their only scoring coming on Fitzgerald's early homer, but lefty Alex Vesia walked two slumping veterans ahead of Fitzgerald.
The table was set perfectly.
A lefty on the mound. A red-hot righty at the plate. One more powerful swing could get the Giants within a run. But Fitzgerald pushed all of that out of his head.
"In that spot, the last thing I want to do is just pop one up or something and get too big," Fitzgerald said later. "It was just to keep the inning alive. A home run there, honestly would have been a rally killer."
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Fitzgerald got a fastball from Vesia and calmly roped it into left, bringing a run home. But, as has been the case all trip, that was it for the Giants.
They left the bases loaded in the ninth on a night when they had just five hits. They lost 5-2 to the Los Angeles Dodgers, continuing an offensive spiral that might change their plans heading into next Tuesday's MLB trade deadline. They're now 1-4 on the road trip.
"It's all cool and all, but it would have been definitely cooler if we would have won," Fitzgerald said of his latest outburst.
The young shortstop had three of the five hits and drove in both Giants runs. He is doing a First Half Heliot Ramos impersonation, but far too often this year, it has been a one-man show for the Giants, whether Ramos or now Fitzgerald.
The rest had just three hits Tuesday, and for the fifth time on this trip, the Giants couldn't even get to four runs. They have played three games at Coors Field and faced two rookies at Dodger Stadium, but they have just 13 runs in the second half.
"It's frustrating," manager Bob Melvin said. "We talked about it [as a group] today, that we need to do a little bit more damage early on and create some traffic and take some pitches, hopefully get some guys on base and do some damage early. We had our best at-bats off Vesia late in the game, which is a tough guy. We've been taking pretty good at-bats off late relievers all year, but we need to be able to get some better at-bats early in the game, and then kind of [off] the middle [relief] guys, too, that we're not having much success against."
The best shot Tuesday didn't come until the ninth, when Vesia walked Matt Chapman and Michael Conforto ahead of Fitzgerald's single. With Daniel Hudson down for the night, the Dodgers had struggling righty Evan Phillips start to warm up, but Vesia stayed in for pinch-hitter Wilmer Flores.
Flores would have been the perfect hitter to face Vesia at any point of the previous three seasons, but he's not the same guy this year. He's batting just .206 this season and hit a series of foul pop-ups before popping up softly to second.
"He has dealt with the knee thing for quite some time now, went on the IL, and I'm not sure he's 100 percent healthy right now," Melvin said. "It looked like one swing he took kind of bothered him a little bit today, but that's a guy in those types of situations off left-handed pitching that usually does some damage."
Right now, the Giants aren't doing it off anybody, and the road doesn't get any easier. It's Tyler Glasnow on Wednesday and then Clayton Kershaw on Thursday, and while the Giants did rock Glasnow the last time out, nobody is counting on that happening again. They have just 21 hits over their last five games and have lost seven straight at Dodger Stadium dating back to last season. They'll need to reverse that, and do so in a hurry, to avoid what could be a very interesting weekend at Oracle Park.
They are six games under for the first time since June 23. They haven't been seven under this year, but hitting that mark before the deadline certainly would seem to make it an easy decision for the front office. Melvin said he's trying not to think about whether this slide will lead to a sale.
"You can't help but know where you are," he said. "There are some other teams separating a little bit, we're dropping farther back. We talked about the cavalry coming [for the rotation], but we need to do it now. We're going to have to wear this one a little bit and come out and win a game tomorrow, because the more we dig a hole for ourselves, the tougher it's going to be for us."
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