DENVER _ Four days after a surgeon burned away a portion of Bruce Bochy's heart, the Giants' manager returned to the dugout.
He pronounced his ticker healthy. He cannot say the same about his last-place team, which fell to 6-11 after a 6-5 loss to the Colorado Rockies and faces the daunting task of beating their way back in the NL West without their most indomitable player.
It was bad enough when news broke Friday afternoon that left-hander Madison Bumgarner sustained a significant left shoulder injury in a dirt bike accident on Thursday's day off.
Then Johnny Cueto served up the first grand slam of his career. And Hunter Pence slipped in the wet grass to turn a lineout into an inside-the-park home run. And the Giants filled air into another late-inning comeback, only to see their hopes pop like a balloon.
Their season is hardly in shreds yet. But there are no good omens.
Even the player they signed as an emergency outfield option, Melvin Upton Jr., will be out eight weeks after he underwent surgery to fix a torn thumb ligament. Upton Jr. couldn't even get out of extended spring games without getting hurt.
Want more? The team bus backed into a car as it departed for Coors Field, according to announcer Dave Flemming.
This milieu of misery is not ideal for someone who just spent a night in a hospital because of a procedure to treat a cardiac arrythmia. Somehow, Bochy maintained his sense of humor.
"It's good to be back with the club and be back in the rhythm, I guess you could say," said Bochy, who had the minor ablation procedure on Monday in San Diego and missed the two-game series at Kansas City earlier in the week. "I feel great now. I'm all set to go."
Bochy also missed a game at Miami last year because of an atrial flutter, and said he began to feel an irregular heartbeat more often in recent weeks when exercising. In the spring of 2015, he had an unscheduled procedure to insert two stents and treat a pair of 90 percent blockages.
"That's why I had the ablation done, so I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore," Bochy said. "I had (a flutter) last year, as you know, and when they start happening a little more frequently then it's time to probably get something done. The more I worked out, the more I would flip into it. They figured out where it was. So we did the procedure to take care of it."
In the procedure, doctors insert a catheter in a blood vessel and insert a tiny device that travels to the heart and burns away the part of the muscle that causes the irregular electrical impulse. Bochy said he also had an angiogram.
"They check you everywhere," Bochy said. "The doc was funny. He said, 'You may have a bad knee but you don't have a bad heart.'
Bochy smiled and said that a wine friend from Napa texted him to extol the heart benefits of a glass of cabernet. A case is on its way. In a way, it cannot arrive quickly enough.
The Giants enjoyed a rare burst of offense in the early innings _ a departure from their month-long habit of going hitless the first time through the lineup. They plated three runs while batting around in the second inning, scoring on Eduardo Nunez's double, Chris Marrero's single and Denard Span's single up the middle.
But they also left the bases loaded, and had a runner thrown out at the plate when Joe Panik tried to score on Cueto's sacrifice bunt. Given the Coors context, a three-run second inning hardly qualified as a haymaker.
Instead, the Rockies connected for one against Cueto in the fourth. They loaded the bases on three singles, and then Trevor Story deposited a 92 mph fastball over the right field scoreboard.
It was Story's first career grand slam. More notably, it was the first grand slam that Cueto had allowed in his 10-year career. The right-hander had given up 110 solo shots, 39 two-run shots and 14 three-run home runs. But in a testament to his resourcefulness, he had held opponents in the park and to a .167 average in 126 career at-bats against him with the bases loaded.
Cueto kept Charlie Blackmon in the park, for all the good it did. The Rockies capped their six-run rally when Tony Wolters singled and Pence slipped while trying to catch Blackmon's line drive. Pence might have lost the ball in the lights before he lost his footing. Either way, there was no way to recover in time. Blackmon's beard did not provide sufficient wind resistance. He slid safely just ahead of catcher Buster Posey's tag.
The Rockies became just the sixth major league team in 100 years to record a grand slam and an inside-the-park home run in the same half-inning. They are the first National League team to do it since 1950, when the New York Giants had Don Mueller drive in four and Hank Thompson fly around the bases; the 2011 Boston Red Sox (Conor Jackson, Jacoby Ellsbury) had been the only major league team do accomplish it since then.
Brandon Belt hit a solo homer in the fifth inning and the Giants made it a one-run game in the eighth when Nunez singled, stole second base and scored on Panik's single up the middle.
But they couldn't get a baserunner against Greg Holland in the ninth. The Giants fell to 1-6 in one-run games, and still don't have a ninth-inning comeback win since May of 2015.
