SAN FRANCISCO _ Well, what do you know? All this time, stretching really was the issue for the San Francisco Giants this season.
They hadn't stretched enough singles into doubles or doubles into triples. They hadn't stretched enough scoring rallies with two-out hits. They hadn't gotten the add-on runs to stretch their occasional leads.
They did all of the above Monday night, and their offensive output allowed Jeff Samardzija's seasonlong dominance to finally pierce through the clouds in a 9-2 victory over the Colorado Rockies in front of an engaged and active crowd at AT&T Park.
Samardzija held the Rockies to two runs in 6 1/3 innings while Brandon Belt and Denard Span hit RBI triples as the Giants beat the Rockies for just the second time in 12 games this season. They had lost nine consecutive to the NL West upstarts.
All the pregame talk centered around a national report that closer Mark Melancon had rubbed some people the wrong way by pushing back the early pregame stretch routine that relief pitchers had established several years ago.
It's never all sunshine and puppy dogs on a team that entered with a 27-51 record, and you could point to any number of areas that call into question the Giants' clubhouse cohesion. How about Madison Bumgarner falling off a dirt bike on an off day? Or Buster Posey standing behind the plate May 29 as Bryce Harper charged Hunter Strickland?
But the Fox Sports report focused on Melancon and his stretching routine, which Giants manager Bruce Bochy dismissed as "pole vaulting over mouse turds."
There are 1,001 reasons the Giants are having their worst season in a generation. They are underperforming in every area. But it is hard to look past a .673 OPS that ranks last in the major leagues and a total lack of power up and down the lineup.
Monday night was a reminder that the Giants are usually a few well-timed gappers away from playing a respectable game against a playoff-caliber team.
Hunter Pence and Posey each had three hits; Posey drove in three while lifting his average to an NL-leading .347. They got the Giants started in the first inning, when Pence chopped an infield single and got a good jump to score on Posey's double.
Then the top of the order set the table in the third, when Span walked and the Giants executed a perfect hit-and-run. Joe Panik singled to the left side, which Rockies shortstop Trevor Story had vacated as he went to cover second base. Span tagged up on Pence's deep out and scored on Posey's sacrifice fly. Then the Giants took a 3-0 lead when Panik scored on Belt's triple off the base of the center field wall.
Span tripled home Gorkys Hernandez in the fourth, and scored on Panik's sacrifice fly.
Samardzija took a shutout into the seventh inning before he allowed singles to three of the four batters he faced. Hunter Strickland made an 0-2 mistake with a fastball that resulted in an RBI single to Tony Wolters. But the right-hander escaped a bases-loaded jam by getting DJ LeMahieu to tap out.
The Giants added to a 5-2 lead in the seventh when Brandon Crawford lined a two-out, RBI single and they tacked on three more following an error in the eighth. Kelby Tomlinson hit an RBI double and Panik singled him home.
The dugout was a happy place again, even before the Giants took a sizable lead. Players crowded the dugout rail for each of Ryder Jones' at-bats, hoping to cheer the rookie's first big league hit. (He's still looking for it.)
The Rockies even warmed up infielder Alexi Amarista for what nearly was his third career relief appearance, and first with the Rockies. Yep. The Giants offense made that happen. And Melancon didn't even need to unbutton a jacket.
By the eighth, Crawford and Tomlinson were laughing together on the bench and Johnny Cueto was blowing bubblegum bubbles as big as his head.
Go ahead. Stretch it until it pops.
