Rich Aurilia drew a bases-loaded walk to tie the game in the eighth inning, but Bob Howry allowed extra-base hits to three of the first four batters he faced in the ninth as the Dodgers took a 5-3 victory on a mistake-filled Tuesday night at AT&T Park.

Howry took the loss, but the Giants might have lost the game with blunders in the early innings.

Left fielder Fred Lewis let a ball clank off his glove for a two-base error and shortstop Juan Uribe skipped a throw to first base for another, leading to two unearned runs the Giants couldn't afford against young ace Chad Billingsley.

"We let that one slip away," Aurilia said. "But hey, we've got a great chance to win the series with Timmy (Lincecum) on the mound tomorrow. There's nothing else we can do about tonight."

There's little the Giants could do against Manny Ramirez, who reached in all five plate appearances. The Dodgers' feared slugger walked twice and hit three doubles, including a line drive down the left field line to greet Howry. Ramirez scored the go-ahead run after a masterful at-bat by Andre Ethier that ended with a double to the wall in center field. Matt Kemp followed with a hard-hit triple to score Ethier.

Ethier saw 10 pitches, fouling off four balls with two strikes, before Howry left a slider over the plate. Ramirez hit a 1-2 splitter.

"He's too good a hitter to miss those," Howry said. "When you make mistakes, these guys are supposed to hit them. They wouldn't be here otherwise."

The Giants didn't have closer Brian Wilson available due to workload issues, and Jeremy Affeldt had pitched more often than Howry. So manager Bruce Bochy hoped Howry could pitch the ninth and possibly one more inning.

"We were strapped tonight," Bochy said. "We knew it going into the game."

Jonathan Sanchez gave the Giants only five innings, but it hardly was his fault. Lewis and Uribe cost him plenty of pitches on a night he faced few jams of his own making.

The Giants had skipped Sanchez's last turn in the rotation because of two days off. He tossed a scoreless relief inning Saturday at Arizona in place of his usual workout off a bullpen mound.

The schedule didn't seem to throw him off. He limited the Dodgers to three hits in five innings, and both runs he gave up were unearned.

The Giants needed a mistake-free game to beat Billingsley, the Dodgers' young ace who struck out 11 when he faced them April 13 at Los Angeles. Billingsley entered with a 4-0 record in seven career starts (11 games) against the Giants .

Instead, they had one of their most uneven defensive games of the season. Leading off the second inning, Lewis broke badly on Ethier's fly ball but appeared to recover before it clanked off his glove for a two-base error. Ethier scored on James Loney's single.

Uribe, who was filling in while Edgar Renteria nursed a tight upper quad, made a nonchalant throw after fielding Loney's routine grounder. Travis Ishikawa, normally a sure-handed first baseman, failed to make what appeared to be a fairly easy pick and Ethier scored as the ball skipped to the screen.

The Giants made their biggest mistakes on the basepaths. In the first inning, Randy Winn was thrown out in a close play while trying to score from first base on Pablo Sandoval's double.

The play might have made third base coach Tim Flannery gun-shy in the sixth. Uribe hit a double over center fielder Kemp's head and Ishikawa had a full head of steam as he rounded third base. But Flannery threw up a stop sign.

The foibles didn't end there. Emmanuel Burriss hit a soft liner to first base and Loney threw across the diamond to double off Ishikawa.

Contact Andrew Baggarly at abaggarly@mercurynews.com.Dodgers 5,Giants 3TODAY: L.A. Dodgers (Eric Stults 2-0) at Giants (Tim Lincecum 1-1), 7:15 p.m. TV: Chs. 11, 31. Radio: 680-AMINSIDE Post-retirement role for Barry Bonds? Page 4