SAN FRANCISCO -- Because of the new schedule, the Giants won't host the Los Angeles Dodgers again until the final weekend of the regular season. At the moment, that seems like a very good thing.
For the second time in three games, a Max Muncy-led lineup pounded Giants pitching. The Dodgers won 10-5, taking the series and leaving the Giants searching for answers and healthy outfielders.
The Giants lost two of them in the middle innings and also lost an early lead they had built off longtime nemesis Clayton Kershaw. A night after the bullpen led the way, Taylor Rogers failed to record an out in the sixth and the Dodgers tacked on against John Brebbia and Ross Stripling.
San Francisco went up 3-0 on Kershaw, but the Dodgers got two runs back in the fourth despite some of the best Giants defense of the last couple of seasons and then tied it up in the fifth on Muncy's 24th homer in 75 career games against the Giants. He wasn't done.
In the sixth, Muncy capped a nightmare frame for the Giants by taking Brebbia deep, clinching a second multi-homer game in this series. He has five homers this season and four have come at Oracle Park. Muncy finished the series with 11 RBI, the most by a Giants opponent in a three-game series since Colorado's Jeffrey Hammonds in 2000.
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One to Forget
A few seconds after he was removed from the game, Rogers walked over to the trash can at the far end of the Giants dugout and dumped his glove inside. For one of the big offseason additions, this was one of the most frustrating nights of a long career.
Rogers entered in the sixth and walked leadoff hitter Trayce Thompson. He went 3-2 on Chris Taylor, who had been striking out in 40 percent of his plate appearances, and then got called for a pitch clock violation that sent Taylor to first. It was the eighth violation of the season for the Giants and by far their most costly.
That "walk" put two on for Mookie Betts, who also walked. Freddie Freeman saw 15 pitches -- fouling off nine straight with two strikes -- before drawing another walk, pushing a run across. That was it for Rogers, who faced four batters and walked all of them. All four came around to score.
Costly Catch of the Year
Bryce Johnson entered in the fourth because Michael Conforto had a tight left calf, and he made an immediate impact. Unfortunately, he lasted just one inning.
Johnson made a leaping catch at the wall to rob Freeman of at least a two-run double, but he was shaken up on the play and sat on the warning track for a couple of minutes before slowly walking back to the dugout. He was immediately taken to the clubhouse and the Giants announced that he was being evaluated for a concussion.
The Giants already are without Mitch Haniger and Austin Slater, and neither is likely to be an option before the team returns home next Thursday.
Meet The Mets
It's a good thing it was 10 p.m. on the East Coast when the Giants got on the board, because their first-inning rally would have been tough to swallow for any New York Mets fans who happened to be following.
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With a runner on, Wilmer Flores blooped a single to right. Two batters later, J.D. Davis hit a sacrifice fly to right that made it 1-0. In his first at-bat back from a brutal stretch in New York, Darin Ruf smacked an RBI double off the wall in left-center.
It was a productive stretch for the heart of the lineup, which was made up of four former Mets: Flores, Conforto, Davis and Ruf. In his return, Ruf was 2-for-4 with the double and a single.