By Morris Phillips

Being quirky, different and thought-provoking isn’t carrying the Giants right now.

But simply playing better baseball might.

The Giants hit into four double plays, committed four errors and contributed heavily to an unique play that interrupted midnight snack time back in New York, but came up short Monday, losing to the Rockies 3-2 at AT&T Park.  The loss was the Giants’ first-ever, fourth consecutive loss at home to Colorado and their 24^th in their last 34 home games.

All the close calls, borderline pitches—especially those thrown by starter Jake Peavy—and botched plays brought a lot of focus on the umpiring crew, who then in turn contributed to the angst of a Giants’ team that’s reached late August, both contending and floundering at the same time.  Not surprisingly, manager Bruce Bochy didn’t survive the eighth inning.  The manager left fuming after arguing with home plate umpire Doug Eddings, who had just rung up Buster Posey on a borderline pitch with a runner on and no outs.

“We made four errors and that’s not going to help our cause.  If you do that, you better score some runs,” Bochy explained.  “Overall, just not a well-played game.  It caught up with us.”

The Giants dropped their third in a row, following the announcement that Tim Lincecum had been demoted from the starting rotation, and on the heels of the meltdown in Washington D.C. to end the road trip in which the Giants watched the Nationals score 14 of the final 15 runs in the ballgame, a 14-6 loss.  Given that sequence of events, the fiery presence of Peavy on the mound Monday seemed to be a plus.  And once the veteran right hander was faced with a one-run deficit, he dug in keeping the Giants within reach for three innings.

But Peavy couldn’t will his team to score, and he couldn’t get all the calls from Eddings either.

In the seventh—after retiring the first two batters, Peavy gave up a single to D.J. LaMahieu and walked starting pitcher Tyler Matzek.  Both batters reached after Peavy achieved two-strike counts and the sequence had the pitcher lathered.  Charlie Blackmon followed with a single to center and all confusion broke out: LaMahieu was declared safe on a bang-bang play at the plate, Blackmon took second in the confusion, and Matzek attempted to score from third but was thrown out. 

But what Eddings saw wasn’t backed by the MLB replay crew in New York and after a two-minute break for review, LaMahieu was called out, ending the inning before all the rest of the excitement.

But remaining within a run of the worst road team in baseball with nine outs remaining didn’t inspire the Giants to rally.

In the seventh, the Giants got a two-out single from Joaquin Arias and a throwing error on the Rockies’ Nolan Arenado allowed Arias to advance to second.  But Angel Pagan grounded out to end the inning.

In the eighth, after Bochy was ejected arguing Posey’s strikeout, Pablo Sandoval grounded into the Giants’ fourth double play of the night.

And in the ninth, a walk to Michael Morse didn’t inspire a rally as Joe Panik lined out, Gregor Blanco struck out and Brandon Crawford also struck out on a foul tip that was caught.

Two of the Giants’ errors led directly to the Rockies two-run rally in the fourth that gave the lead they didn’t relinquish.  In addition to the errors Peavy’s balk allowed Drew Stubbs to score from third base with the tying run.  Corey Dickerson followed with a sacrifice fly that scored Justin Morneau with what would stand as the winning run.

The Giants remain a half-game ahead of the Braves for the second wild card spot, with both teams trailing the Cardinals in that race.  The loss also dropped the Giants five games behind the Dodgers in the NL West.

Among the things the Giants will look back on if they don’t hang on to their playoff spot: the Rockies improved to 5-2 at AT&T Park in 2014.  In all the other parks Colorado has visited this season, they’re 14-42.

“We must just like coming out of the elevation and playing down here.  Bodies feel a lot better when you get down to sea-level, and that might have something to do with it.  But really it’s baseball and anybody can win on any given day,” winning pitcher Matzek said.

On Tuesday, the Giants turn to Madison Bumgarner, looking for his 15^th win of the year, while the Rockies offer Jorge De La Rosa.