SAN FRANCISCO _ The phrase that Carlos Martinez used in Arizona to describe what even he considered a turnaround was that he had become the pitcher he was "two months ago."
The results sure say so.
In his second consecutive suffocating outing of this road trip, Martinez pitched seven innings and held the Giants to one run on six hits. He turned a two-run lead over to the bullpen for the final six outs and watched as Jordan Hicks and Bud Norris secured a 3-2 victory Saturday against the Giants at AT&T Park. Martinez (6-4) didn't limit his afternoon to pitching.
All three of the Cardinals' runs came in a two-inning cluster and it was the bottom of the order, for a second time in as many games, that provided needed timeliness.
In the third inning, Martinez doubled home the Cardinals' first run for a 1-0 lead. In the fourth inning, singles by Marcell Ozuna and Paul DeJong put a rally in motion and Dexter Fowler and Francisco Pena completed it with RBIs. Fowler skied a fly ball to left field to score Ozuna from third on a sacrifice fly, and Pena poked a single to right field that scored DeJong from second.
The Giants chipped away at the Cardinals lead later. A bad hop gave Gorkys Hernandez a single and Brandon Belt delivered him with a double. Belt had three hits _ three of the Giants' first eight hits, as it turned out _ and he had the Giants' lone RBIs through eight innings. In the eighth, Belt drilled a 100-mph fastball from Hicks up the middle to score Alen Hanson and send a one-run game into the ninth.
Norris was unavailable the first two games of the series because of soreness in his right index finger that he felt Wednesday in Arizona. The right-hander retired the Giants in order in the ninth for his 17th save of the season.
Buster Posey stood on deck as Norris struck out Austin Slater on four pitches to end the game.
