By Morris Phillips

Quite often, those prominent faces revived in new places do so in San Francisco.

From Jason Schmidt, Pat Burrell, Randy Winn to Jake Peavy and Tim Hudson, the Brian Sabean-orchestrated Giants have squeezed the last, remaining ounces of quality baseball from declining vets again and again.

But like Mr. Phoenix—in lets say, Phoenix—those reclamation projects sometimes take flight elsewhere like Dan Haren in Miami, and Martin Prado, also in Miami.

And when they do it someplace else, the Giants often find themselves on the bad side of a good thing.   They definitely found themselves in that place on Thursday night when Haren, Prado and others trounced the Giants, 7-2 at AT&T Park.

Haren threw seven innings, allowing two runs and eight hits to earn his fourth win in five decisions this season.  The talented but nomadic 34-year old joined the Marlins this off-season after contemplating retirement instead of joining a seventh, different team in 13 big-league seasons.  But Haren decided to pitch on, and so far he’s been terrific, far better than his pattern of winning as much as he’s lost since 2009.

Haren used the heavy, cool air to his advantage, escaping a couple of jams and keeping the Giants from coming up with the big hit that have often damaged his starts.  By the time the Giants had some success in the seventh, pushing across their only two runs, the Marlins were ahead comfortably, 6-0.

“He’s a great competitor,” manager Mike Redmond said of Haren.  “I’ve seen that really his whole career.  He just doesn’t make a ton of mistakes out over the plate.  He doesn’t give in.”

Meanwhile, Tim Hudson was no mystery from the start, allowing three runs in the second– starting with Haren’s RBI double—and six runs total.  Manager Bruce Bochy elected to leave Hudson in the game into the seventh, hoping to spare an overworked bullpen.  Hudson would end up allowing a career-worst 15 hits and having to answer obvious questions afterwards.

“Pretty much the difference in the game was their starting pitcher offensively.  If I can just get him out then we have a pretty good chance to win the ballgame,” Hudson said.

Haren had a pair of hits, two runs batted in and two runs scored despite entering the game without a hit on the season.  But like the rest of the Marlins’ lineup, Haren attacked the vulnerable Hudson early in the pitch count with success.

In a bit of an oddity, a game with a combined 26 hits took only 2 ½ hours to complete as pitchers pitched and hitters hit at a brisk pace.

Prado continued his hot-hitting, producing a second consecutive three-hit game after a four RBI game on Saturday.  The consistent-hitting infielder is hitting .309, one year after hitting a career-low .282 for the Diamondbacks and Yankees.

The Giants broke through in the seventh with Justin Maxwell’s run-scoring sacrifice fly and Matt Duffy’s RBI double.  The Giants extended their streak of scoring six runs or less to all 29 games this season, a new franchise record for tepid offense.

In game two of the four-game series, the Giants will have Tim Lincecum facing Miami’s Jarred Cosart with first pitch at 7:15pm.