Chang Sio
MLB.com
Matt Cain stood in front of his locker with his hands on his hips talking to reporters postgame. All he needed was a cape and he would've been doing his best Dean Cain impersonation.
Cain used his Superman-like pitching abilities to help carry the Giants past the Rockies, 3-1, on Friday in front of 40,524 at Coors Field.
The win gave the Giants and Rockies identical records at 52-44, which put them in a tie for the National League Wild Card lead. The two teams still have two games left in this weekend's three-game series and will play each other 12 more times overall.
Cain (12-2) threw seven innings and yielded an earned run on three hits with four walks and five strikeouts to pick up the win. He also threw 117 pitches, his third-highest total this season. Jason Hammel (5-5) received the loss by giving up three runs on seven hits in six innings.
The victory tied Cain with the Rockies' Jason Marquis for the NL lead with 12, and it couldn't have come at a better time.
The Giants led the Rockies by two games heading into the All-Star break. However, the lead quickly evaporated. They lost five of their first six coming out of their break and trailed by 1 1/2 games before winning, 5-1, Thursday and winning behind Cain's performance Friday to catch their division rival.
"I knew we were a game back in the Wild Card and we needed to win this game," Cain said. "We needed to take the series from these guys. I think it would be big for us to get the momentum going back into home because the road trip, so far, hasn't gone the way we wanted to."
Cain might have impressed many Cy Young Award voters as he carried a no-hitter through 4 2/3 innings before Ian Stewart broke it up with a single to right field. Both Cain and manager Bruce Bochy said it was too early to talk Cy Young when posed with the question.
"He's really emerged, I think, as a terrific pitcher," Bochy said. "He's not trying to power his way through guys and he has great poise out there. We'll see. We'll talk about that in September."
Cain ran into two-out trouble in the sixth with a double, a walk and Garrett Atkins' RBI double. Cain escaped when he struck out All-Star Brad Hawpe looking on a 1-2 slider to preserve a 3-1 lead.
"We were in a good position for getting him out of the game," Stewart said. "But he's a horse."
The Rockies threatened in the ninth with a Todd Helton leadoff walk and a one-out single by Hawpe. But closer Brian Wilson did his best Harry Houdini act by forcing Troy Tulowitzki to swing at his 97-mph two-strike fastball into a game-ending 6-4-3 double play.
Wilson earned his 25th save of the year.
While Cain was masterful on the mound, Fred Lewis was as magical with his bat as Luke Skywalker is with a light saber.
Lewis doubled down the right-field line in the fourth, moved to third on Pablo Sandoval's single and scored on Bengie Molina's double play to give the Giants a 1-0 lead. Nate Schierholtz also homered in the frame, his fourth of the season, to push the lead to 2-0. The homer snapped a seven-game, 284-at-bat homerless streak for the Giants. It was the team's longest homerless streak of the season.
In the sixth, Lewis hit a shot into the left-center-field gap for a triple and scored when Molina singled to right to give the Giants a 3-0 lead. Lewis had an infield single in the first. He missed the cycle when he walked on five pitches in the eighth. It would've been the second cycle of his career. His first came on May 13, 2007, also against the Rockies at Coors Field. This was about the only item of the night that upset the Giants.
"I knew it and I was kind of disappointed [reliever Franklin Morales] wouldn't throw me a strike," chuckled Lewis, who had a season-high three hits. "But things happen for a reason. I knew that I needed that and Helton, at first, he was like, 'You were trying to hit a home run, weren't you?' So I just laughed and told him, 'Yup.'"
From: MLB.com
 San Francisco (52-44) Won 2 | San Francisco 3, Colorado 1 |  Colorado (52-44) Lost 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Standings thru 7/24/09 | Recap: SF | COL | Wrap | Gameday |
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