Written by the AP at ESPN.com
The Dodgers rallied once, twice and then a third time. Manager Dave Roberts thought his club would snap out of its long losing streak at last.
The National League-leading Dodgers lost their 11th straight game, making it their longest skid since the club moved to Los Angeles. They finished their 8-6 defeat to the San Francisco Giants at 2:10 a.m. local time Tuesday after a pair of rain and lightning delays late Monday.
“It’s disappointing because our guys played hard tonight; they really did,” Roberts said. “I thought that we were going to win that game. I thought we put ourselves in a position to win, but we couldn’t hold the lead.”
Hunter Pence hit a go-ahead single in the sixth for San Francisco against Pedro Baez (3-5).
Following a 42-minute delay ahead of first pitch, Curtis Granderson struck out against Chris Stratton, then the game immediately entered an even longer delay — this time for 2 hours, 52 minutes, before resuming at 10:50 p.m. local time.
The total delay time of 3:34 was more than the game time of 3:22. Roberts said his preference would have been a doubleheader, but he understood it was a league decision, saying “it was out of our hands.”
“This is obviously very uncharacteristic to start a game this late,” he said.
Los Angeles, which has lost 16 of 17 overall, had its lead atop the NL over idle Washington trimmed to 3½ games. After a three-game set against the Giants that ends Wednesday, the Dodgers travel to play the Nationals next.
The skid topped a pair of 10-game losing streaks in L.A. from 1961 and 1992. The 1944 Brooklyn team lost 16 straight games. L.A. held a season-best 21-game division lead for four days and as recently as Aug. 25, but that has dwindled to nine games over Arizona.
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