Span-tastic: Giants walk off in 14th

SAN FRANCISCO -- Though the clock at AT&T Park showed midnight as Monday night's game ended, it was anything but the witching hour for the San Francisco Giants.
Denard Span's single to right field scored Gorkys Hernández to break a 14th-inning tie Tuesday night and lift the San Francisco Giants to a 4-3 victory over the Colorado Rockies. It marked the first time since May 27-28 that the Giants won back-to-back games.
"We feel like we've got a lot more energy out there and in the clubhouse," said Giants starter Matt Cain, who surrendered Mark Reynolds' three-run, sixth-inning homer that accounted for Colorado's scoring.
With the score even at 3, Hernandez lined a one-out double off the base of the left-field wall off Rockies right-hander Chad Qualls (1-1). "He broke my bat with a sinker, so I knew he'd throw me a slider," Hernandez said. Cory Gearrin (2-2), who worked three innings as the last of six Giants relievers, struck out. Up came Span, who spanked a 1-0 pitch to right field for his fifth career walk-off hit as the Giants improved to 7-3 in extra innings.

Trailing, 3-1, the Giants inched into a tie on Brandon Crawford's sixth-inning sacrifice fly and pinch-hitter Kelby Tomlinson's eighth-inning RBI single.
Rockies starter Jeff Hoffman gave his team some much-needed innings, going 6 2/3 while allowing two runs on six hits and three walks with six strikeouts.
"For the most part I was able to locate everything," Hoffman said.

With the loss, Colorado's losing streak now sits at a season-high seven games. In that span, the Rockies have seen a half-game lead over the Dodgers in the National League West transform into a 5 1/2-game deficit.
"It's been a crazy seven days," Reynolds said. "It's been rough. It's baseball, man. Sometimes you get the breaks, sometimes you don't. It seemed like we were getting a bunch of breaks early and a couple of weeks ago; now everything seems to be going the other way."
MOMENTS THAT MATTERED
Not to be overlooked: Gearrin provided long-lasting, effective relief for the Giants with his winning effort. However, he was essentially matched by Colorado left-hander Seth Rusin, who faced the minimum nine batters in his three-inning stint. Rusin bookended his outing with strikeouts in the ninth and 11th and coaxed a double-play grounder in the 10th that stopped a Giants rally before it started.

Posey's pickoffs: Giants catcher Buster Posey threw out a pair of Rockies baserunners attempting to steal second base, thus denying Colorado potential offensive breakthroughs.
"What a game he had back there," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said.
Significantly, both plays occurred in extra innings. Posey threw out Ian Desmond, who led off the 11th inning with a single, then erased Charlie Blackmon, who attempted his larceny with two outs in the 12th.
"Both teams made some plays," Rockies manager Bud Black said. "It was a pretty clean game, which made the game the way it was."

QUOTABLE
"Both teams, as the game went on, had some opportunities. In a game like this, where it was well-pitched on the front end by both starters, it usually comes down to the one big hit, or one big play at the end." -- Black, on his team's close loss
WHAT'S NEXT
Rockies: Colorado will wrap up its three-game set against the Giants by sending southpaw Kyle Freeland to the mound for Wednesday's 1:45 p.m. MT matinee. Freeland is in the midst of a stellar rookie campaign and is 2-0 with a 0.69 ERA in a pair of starts against the Giants this season.
Giants: In Wednesday's 12:45 p.m. PT series finale, left-hander Ty Blach will try to recapture the effectiveness he harnessed earlier this season, when he made six quality starts in a stretch of seven outings from April 30 to June 2.
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