The San Francisco Giants entered their three-game series against the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers trailing in the NL West by five games. A three-game sweep would've gotten this thing back into a workable place. Instead, the Giants have dropped two of three games -- after a 9-3 loss on Wednesday -- and are left focusing on the wild card.
Wednesday's game had to have been particularly demoralizing, given what Yasiel Puig did. First, Puig deposited this Matt Moore pitch into the seats for a three-run home run and 4-1 Dodgers lead in the first inning:
Later, Puig made an outstanding over-the-shoulder catch in right field:
Viva Cuba! Viva Yasiel!says Vin Scully.
The highlight itself doesn't do much justice to the degree of difficulty in going back and making that catch at full speed. Such a tough play and Puig made it look relatively easy. Hopefully he didn't stare at Madison Bumgarner afterward.
A bit later, Giants manager Bruce Bochy pulled Buster Posey, Hunter Pence, Angel Pagan and Eduardo Nunez in what seemed like a white-flag move, though, let's be honest, the Giants weren't coming back.
The Dodgers now lead the Giants by six games and have a magic number of five. My general rule is when the games back number is greater than the magic number, you can probably call the race. So, in more important matters, we should point out that the Mets, Cardinals and Giants all sit at 80-72 and in a tie for the two wild-card spots.
