Mercury News
As you might expect, it was a happy clubhouse after the Giants torched Colorado Rockies ace Ubaldo Jimenez and stopped a seven-game losing streak with an 11-8 victory Saturday night.
The biggest grin belonged to Aubrey Huff. A day earlier, he made the loony prediction that a pitcher with a 14-1 record might be just what the Giants needed to break their skid.
Not only that, Huff predicted Saturday night's hero, too. He approached Travis Ishikawa before the game and thrust a finger into his chest.
"I told him, 'Man, you're my pick to click,' " Huff said. "He hadn't started in a month and a half, and he swung it like he's been playing every day."
Huff wasn't exaggerating. Ishikawa hadn't started since May 19, and manager Bruce Bochy might have showed a sadistic streak by sticking him at first base against Jimenez.
But it turned out to be an inspired streak. Ishikawa hit a grand slam to cap a seven-run third inning — the Giants' biggest inning since a 10-run flogging of the Pittsburgh Pirates on Sept. 7, 2008.
The Giants needed more heroes, though. Barry Zito and two relievers couldn't hold a 7-1 lead, and the Rockies raced back to take the lead with a four-run sixth.
But another pigeonholed player, Nate Schierholtz, immediately sparked the Giants with a leadoff triple in the seventh and scored the tying run on Andres Torres' single. Freddy Sanchez's single and a stolen base got Torres to third, and he scored the go-ahead run on Pablo Sandoval's sacrifice fly. Huff added a two-run homer in the ninth, his 15th of the season, and Brian Wilson worked a four-out save as the Giants avoided falling to .500 for the first time all season. "You can't say enough about the grit they played with," said Bochy, who was ejected for arguing a call at first base in the sixth. "Any time you cough up a lead like that, it's disheartening. But they didn't show it." Schierholtz said: "After losing so many in a row, we weren't going to just roll over and die. We're right there. At that point, it's 0-0 again, and Jimenez is out of the game. We had every opportunity." The Giants hadn't scored seven runs in any of their previous 10 games, let alone a single inning. And while they didn't officially beat Jimenez, the seven-run inning was good enough to prove something to themselves. "We let it hang out, didn't we?" Huff said. "The odds were against us, but this is one you have to win or it can get ugly quick, man. It gives this offense confidence. If you can get this guy, you can get anybody." Bochy's confidence in Ishikawa is rising. He said Ishikawa will start again as the Giants attempt to split this four-game series today. And he will get more chances now that Buster Posey will be catching more often. "With the job Ishi's done pinch hitting, he's forced the issue," Bochy said. The Giants used a patient approach against Jimenez to set up Ishikawa's slam. Sanchez knocked in a run when he executed a hit-and-run single to right field. Sandoval got a blooper to fall in center field for another run-scoring single — the kind of break the Giants hadn't been getting. Juan Uribe and Posey walked on full-count pitches to load the bases, and Ishikawa took an aggressive cut on the first pitch. It was a pretty good swing for a guy who had gone 40 games without a start and didn't realize he was playing until he had been at the ballpark for a few hours Saturday. "I came in doing my normal routine," Ishikawa said. "I caught some Frisbees with the strength coach and was on my way to do 20 minutes on the treadmill when I saw the lineup. Every day I come in ready to start. And if I don't, I do what I do to get ready."
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