Dodgers Taken Down A Notch By Belt, Giants

Brandon Belt's two-run double to left field off Hong-Chih Kuo in the bottom of the seventh broke a tie and sent the Dodgers further into the abyss with their fourth straight loss, a 5-3 defeat at the hands of the Giants. San Francisco has beaten the Dodgers six straight times for the first time since just after Bryan Adams bought his first real six string.

Belt, who was recalled this morning from Triple A Fresno, played in his 20th career MLB game tonight, eight of which have been against the Dodgers. He homered in the second inning, a solo shot to right field off Rubby De La Rosa to open the scoring, and in the early part of his career has feasted off Dodger pitching.

The rookie's heroics made a winner of Madison Bumgarner, who ran into trouble in the third inning, but recovered to retire his final 16 batters faced. The Dodgers rallied from a 2-0 deficit in the third inning thanks to a pair of doubles, by James Loney and Tony Gwynn Jr., and a two-run single up the middle by Rafael Furcal, who snapped an 0-for-19 skid to give the Dodgers a temporary lead. Bumgarner pitched eight innings, and retired the side in order in six of them.

De La Rosa pitched reasonably well in his five innings of work, and likely the worst thing to come out of his hand on the night was a looping throw to second on a potential double-play ball in the fifth. De La Rosa allowed three runs on nine hits and had five strikeouts, but more importantly had no walks for the first time in his eight big league starts.

Matt Kemp singled off Brian Wilson in the ninth inning with two outs to bring the tying run to the plate in the form of pinch hitter Andre Ethier, but Ethier flew out to left to end the game.

Clayton Kershaw gets to play streak stopper tomorrow in a daytime affair against Tim Lincecum on getaway day.

WP - Madison Bumgarner (5-8): 8 IP, 4 hits, 3 runs, 7 strikeouts

LP - Hong-Chih Kuo (0-1): 2/3 IP, 2 hits, 2 runs, 3 walks, strikeout

Sv - Brian Wilson (29): 1 IP, 1 hit

Box Score