SF Giants swept by Dodgers in four-game series for first time since 1995

LOS ANGELES — In four games against the Dodgers, the Giants held exactly two leads. Both times, it didn’t even take a full inning for them to vanish.

Swept Sunday in the finale of this four-game series, 7-4, the Giants chased Clayton Kershaw early but it didn’t matter. They rallied for to take a 2-1 lead in the third but immediately coughed it up in the bottom half and never led again.

The four-game sweep was the first at the hands of the rival Dodgers since 1995 and dropped them 16.5 games back in the NL West, a larger gap than any since the end of the 2019 season. The only other time they led in 36 innings this series came in the eighth on Thursday, 6-5, before the Dodgers rallied for four runs in the bottom half.

On Sunday, Alex Cobb allowed four runs — three with two outs (increasing the Dodgers’ two-out scoring total this series to 20 runs) — by the end of the third inning, but it was Tyler Rogers who surrendered the decisive blows in the seventh inning.

Any momentum from their 7-2 stretch heading into the All-Star break was halted over the past four days in Los Angeles.

Ruf heating up

Facing Kershaw in the future Hall-of-Famer’s first outing since he started the All-Star Game, nobody on the Giants put together better at-bats than Darin Ruf, whose two-run homer in the fifth tied the game at 4 and knocked Kershaw from the game.

Before slugging his 11th home run of the season, Ruf saw 11 pitches in his first at-bat (before striking out swinging), then worked a full count and drew a walk in his second trip to the plate. Since the calendar turned to July, only the Astros’ Yordan Alvarez has hit as many home runs as Ruf in fewer at-bats.

Ruf’s fifth-inning homer was his fifth of the month — in 44 at-bats (Alvarez: 5 HRs in 40 ABs) — nearly doubling his total from the first three months of the season. After taking a .673 OPS into the month, Ruf’s mark for July is .976.

The second of Yermín Mercedes’ doubles set up Thairo Estrada’s two-RBI knock that gave the Giants their only lead of the game, 2-1, before they gave it up in the bottom of the third.

The Giants’ four runs off Kershaw were three more than they had mustered against Dodgers starters’ in the three previous games of this series. It was also the sixth time in 54 starts against Kershaw that the Giants had tagged him for four or more runs and only the fourth time he failed to complete five innings against the Giants.

Cobb buckles down

Alex Cobb left a 4-4 ballgame with two outs in the sixth inning, pitching deeper than Kershaw (4⅓ IP) and staying in longer than anyone could have expected after he needed 72 pitches to make it through three innings.

After a three-run third inning that tied the game at 4, Cobb retired eight straight batters before issuing a two-out walk that ended his outing. But by nearly completing six innings, Cobb provided important relief to the Giants bullpen, which has no days off to recover until Aug. 5.

However, the Giants’ Jekyll and Hyde bullpen allowed three Dodgers runs to break the tie in the seventh inning.

Entering Sunday’s game, San Francisco’s relievers had posted the fifth-worst ERA (5.17) of any bullpen in the majors in July, coming after they posted the eighth-best mark in June (3.30). The up-and-down performance dates back to the start of the season, when their 2.22 April ERA was the second-best in the majors but followed it with the worst of all 30 clubs in May (6.26).