By Jeremy Harness

SAN FRANCISCO – In his first outing of the year, we were reminded of what Tim Lincecum is still capable of doing. It didn’t take very long to be reminded of what he cannot do anymore.

After throwing seven shutout innings at the Padres Friday night that brought back memories of his Cy Young Award-winning days, Lincecum lost his command – and the strike zone – in the first inning Wednesday night. With his decreased velocity and, thus, inability to get away with the mistakes in pitch location that he once had, he paid dearly for it.

Charlie Blackmon led off the game with a walk and Troy Tulowitzki followed up with a single to put some pressure on. However, Lincecum rallied and was only a strike away from getting out of the jam in when he caught too much of the plate to Nolan Arenado, and the third baseman took him deep to give Colorado a 3-0 lead.

The Giants could not recover from that setback, blowing opportunities to get back into the game as they lost their sixth game in a row, 4-2, before 41,188 disappointed fans at AT&T Park, including the first three home games of the 2015 season. In fact, Wednesday marked the first time that they have been swept in a season-opening home series since 2000, which happened to be the inaugural season at this ballpark.

In other words, it’s not the way the Giants expected to celebrate their World Series title of a season ago, to be sure.

Lincecum (1-1) was able to steady the ship, keeping the Rockies scoreless for the next three innings before being pulled for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the fifth. He finished surrendering those four runs on six hits while walking one batter and striking out four. The deficit is manageable for a lot of teams, but it seems like more of a death sentence for the Giants’ offense.

To their credit, the Giants did show minor signs of life during Wednesday’s game after the Rockies dropped the three-spot on them, but they still drew mostly blanks when it was time to fire the big shot.

Colorado starter Tyler Matzek (1-0) also had something to do with that, as he went six innings and gave up a single run on five hits, walking only one and striking out three others. For the Giants, though, this has been increasingly commonplace.

Down 4-1, Gregor Blanco, for instance, delivered instant excitement with a one-out triple while pinch-hitting for Lincecum in the fifth. That was quickly extinguished when, once again, the Giants failed to bring him in and remained in a three-run hole.

The Giants continued that unpleasant theme in the eighth, after Matt Duffy inched the Giants closer with his first major-league home run, a solo shot that narrowed the Giants’ deficit to two. Pagan then singled and Buster Posey walked right behind him, but the Giants failed to bring either man around, wasting yet another opportunity.

With that, the Giants have now gone 4-for-47 with runners in scoring position in their past seven games, which certainly paints a picture as to why they now sit with a 3-7 record.

NOTES: Nori Aoki entered Wednesday’s game with a 17-game hitting streak that dated back to Sept. 21, but that came to an end against Colorado, as the left fielder went 0-for-3 and getting hit by a pitch in the first inning.