Giants assess road trip before playing host to Dodgers

The Giants (9-13) outhit the Nationals, 8-7, but they finished 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position and left 10 men on base en route to their fourth shutout loss of the year. They also didn’t play their crispest defense, as the Nationals opened the scoring in the fifth after Heliot Ramos couldn’t come up with Keibert Ruiz’s drive to left field, allowing it to fall for a double that knocked in the speedy Nasim Nuñez from second.

“On plays at the plate, sometimes I think you can get quick and try to make the tag,” Bailey said. “I feel like I was in a good spot. Willy made a great throw. Obviously, I’d like to make that play.”

“Towards the end, I think we got a little beat down by the lack of results on offense and being down on the scoreboard, as well,” Vitello said. “But I didn’t sense some of the things that as a coach, you’d want to correct or you don’t like that maybe we had going on earlier in the season. The vibe and the approach we had going into the game in the first five or six innings was really, really good. It’s just a lot easier to be energetic or celebrate or look like things are going well for you when you’re getting rewarded or you find a way to manufacture stuff on offense.”

They played with more attitude and edge against the Reds, which was exemplified by the benches-clearing incident between left-hander Erik Miller and Sal Stewart at Great American Ball Park on Thursday. Their bullpen -- a big question mark coming into the season -- looked dependable while logging a 2.04 ERA over their last 11 games, the second-best mark in the Majors behind only the Reds.

“I think it was real positive as far as revealing identity, real positive as far as getting on the right track of playing good baseball,” Vitello said of the road trip as a whole. “Really, some good things from our pitching, in particular the bullpen.”

The next step for the Giants will be to continue to build on the positives and find a way to put it all together against the MLB-best Dodgers (15-6), who will be coming to town for the start of a big rivalry series on Tuesday night.

“I think you want to hunt down the best,” Vitello said. “If you're going out hunting, you're looking for big game, call it. I think when you're competing, whether it's basketball, hockey, football, whatever, you want to know who the best is, and then you want to see what you can do against them.”

Click here to read article