Shohei Ohtani’s on-base streak snapped. Aftershocks from Patrick Bailey’s game-winning, three-run shot on Wednesday night were still reverberating around Oracle. San Francisco’s previous wins gave them a commanding two game advantage over LA over 2,597 head-to-head match-ups.

So yeah…there was a certain level of sympathy being felt amongst the orange-and-black community in Thursday’s finale. Pity is a good word too. It’d be impolite to not give your guests something for their troubles.

LA fans had journeyed so far, trekking up the cement cow-chute of I-5 (savvier Californians prefer the free-flowing, lettuce chute of Highway 101) — and for what? Dalton Rushing content? For Shohei Ohtani to go hitless and not win as a pitcher in the same game?

And isn’t it weird that he’s a two-way player once every six days and he gets all the attention, yet Luis Arraez scoops short hops at second and hits singles every damn day? View LinkSo a parting gift for our forlorn brothers and their clown prince, Tyler Glasnow. Ultimate goof, certified knucklehead — the Giants bats graciously blessed him.

A 3-0 shutout for a 3-0 shutout. The cup of compassion overfloweth. I jest, of course. Not about Glasnow being a knucklehead, he will always and forever be one thanks to this clip.

I jest about the Giants having any semblance of control over the outcome of Thursday’s game because hot dang Glasnow was dominant today. No generosity needed — he took everything that he wanted over 8 scoreless innings, while allowing just one single, striking out 9 and facing the minimum of 24 hitters. He racked up chase and whiffs and legless contact, stealing strikes with his fastball and spinning hitters with his curveball, working them north, south, and right down the equator.

He gave hitters a ladder for them to climb, and they asked “How high?” He threw shovels at them and told them to dig. Believe it or not, this was Glasnow toning down his breaking ball usage. The “off-script” approach might help explain some of his effectiveness.

His sinker usage over his previous starts sat at 18%, he bumped it up to 45% Thursday afternoon. He dropped his four-seam reliance from 37% to 12%, and his curveball (including knuckle curve) from 30% to 22%. Fastballs accounted for 15 of his 23 called strikes (especially at the top of the zone).

While hitters inched up to the plate, anxious about the big hook or slider, Glasnow’s fastballs caught them off guard. In a friendly 3-1 hitter’s count, he served up a 96 MPH sinker right down the middle and Willy Adames threw his bat at the ball, popping it up in foul ground, as if it snuck up and bit him.Perhaps a visual would be the most effective. This pool noodle wave at a curveball to end the 6th pretty much sums up the experience.

View LinkIs it best to have no idea, close your eyes, and swing? Or have no idea, close your eyes, and take because you have no idea what is about to be thrown at you? View LinkView LinkAnd then there was Logan Webb — the other guy.

It wasn’t that Webb pitched poorly — he logged his second consecutive quality start and third of the year, allowing 3 earned over 7 IP — he just got left in the dust by Glasnow. That’s how life works sometimes. Webb knows that, and he knows he pitched well and kept the offense in the game, but there will always be something grating about being hung with the loss, with having to wear, as the inimitable Smash Mouth would say, “the shape of an ‘L’ on your forehead.” View LinkI get the sense too that Webb still isn’t completely stoked about how 2026 is going.

Maybe that’s why he’s a professional athlete. He’ll never be fully satisfied, even after a solid outing with a lot of good in it. The obvious one: he kept the Dodgers in the park and held them to just three runs.

He helped extend Ohtani’s not-on-base streak to two games with a pair of strikeouts and a pair of ground outs (including a DP). He slayed that beast, much like he did with Aaron Judge in the season opener, but lacked a needed edge against others. In the 2nd, Webb had Dalton Rushing — the rivalry’s newest troll — in a 1-2 hole with two outs and a runner on second.

The pitch he threw wasn’t by no means a mistake in terms of location, it was just a mistake in the sense Rushing saw it coming. He was looking down, got something waaayyy down, and scraped a change-up off the plate and deposited it into center field for LA’s first run, and lead, of the series. Webb could tip his cap, or he could think about predictability, about pitching backwards, or like Glasnow did, “off-script.” Would it have