Giants win Bochy's final game in Baltimore

BALTIMORE -- The Orioles took a moment to honor retiring Giants manager Bruce Bochy ahead of his final game at Camden Yards on Sunday afternoon, airing a special tribute video on the scoreboard that highlighted many of his accomplishments and presenting him with a personally-engraved set of Sagamore Spirit Rye bottles and glasses.

Bochy will now depart Baltimore on the verge of yet another impressive milestone. The Giants’ 8-1 win over the Orioles marked Bochy’s 999th career victory with San Francisco, leaving him one shy of joining Hall of Famer John McGraw as the only two managers in franchise history to reach the 1,000-win mark.

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Bochy will get his first shot at the threshold on Tuesday night when the Giants open a three-game series against the Mets with ace Madison Bumgarner on the mound.

The Giants will head to New York after taking two of three games from the cellar-dwelling Orioles to improve to 3-3 on their road trip. Right-hander Jeff Samardzija fired six innings of one-run ball, Evan Longoria drove in three runs and Brandon Crawford homered twice Sunday to help the Giants secure the club’s first series victory since May 17-19 at Arizona.

“We pitched well, played good defense the last couple of days and swung the bats well,” Crawford said. “There haven’t been a whole lot of games lately like that. It’s nice to get a couple in a row and keep going with it.”

Here are three takeaways from Sunday’s series finale:

1. The rotation is showing signs of a turnaround

The Giants’ starters finished May with an MLB-worst 7.32 ERA, but they’ve gotten far better results in their most recent turn through the rotation. Aside from Drew Pomeranz’s debacle in Friday night’s series opener, the Giants have now received quality starts in four of their last five games from Bumgarner, Tyler Beede, Shaun Anderson and Samardzija.

“To me, the key to playing good baseball is getting those quality starts,” Bochy said. “You can use the ‘pen like you want. Hopefully that gets contagious.”

Samardzija surrendered a solo home run to Trey Mancini in the first inning, but he dominated the Orioles thereafter, allowing only two more hits while walking none and striking out six to earn his first victory since April 23. He departed after throwing a season-high 110 pitches, 26 of which came against Baltimore shortstop Jonathan Villar, who worked 11- and 12-pitch at-bats in his last two plate appearances against Samardzija but flew out both times.

“Good thing he’s not in the division or else I’d have to come up with a new pitch or something,” Samardzija joked.

2. The veteran bats are heating up, too

The Giants have struggled to consistently produce runs this season, but their offense came through this series, scoring 22 runs against the Orioles’ pitching staff, which entered Sunday with an MLB-worst 5.75 ERA this season.

Longoria launched his 22nd career home run at Camden Yards off Gabriel Ynoa in the fourth inning Sunday, snapping a career-worst 0-for-21 skid and tying the game at 1. He added a two-run double in the fifth and a single in the sixth, finishing a triple shy of the cycle.

Crawford also enjoyed a big day at the plate, crushing a pair of solo shots to secure his third career multi-homer game and his first since Aug. 3, 2015, at Atlanta. Brandon Belt, meanwhile, went 1-for-3 with two walks to extend his hitting streak to nine games, batting .313 (10-for-32) with two doubles, one home run, six RBIs and six runs scored over that stretch.

“I think offensively we’ve been inconsistent, but it’s definitely good to feel like you can kind of string together innings,” Longoria said. “We hit some solo home runs, but we didn’t really have any big three-run home runs. It was more putting hits together, working walks and kind of doing it the way our offense is built to do it, so that definitely feels good.”

3. Smith continues to dominate

Left-hander Will Smith has received limited save opportunities as a result of the Giants’ 24-34 mark, but he has still proved to be an elite relief arm for the club. He took the mound in the ninth Sunday with the Giants leading by seven runs and struck out two in a scoreless inning. Smith has now held opponents to a .086 average (3-for-35) on the road this season with a 1.69 ERA over 10 2/3 innings. If Smith continues to pitch well for the Giants, he could end up being one of their most valuable trade chips at the July 31 Trade Deadline.