Pumped-up Brad Penny dazzled in his home debut and Juan Uribe homered twice, tripled and drove in five runs as the San Francisco Giants beat the San Diego Padres 9-4 on Monday.
Uribe and Edgar Renteria hit back-to-back home runs, helping the Giants remain two games back of the Rockies in the NL wild-card race. Colorado beat Cincinnati.
Penny (2-0) didn't give up a hit until Will Venable's triple leading off the fifth. The Padres certainly didn't want a repeat of Jonathan Sanchez's improbable no-hitter against them here on July 10.
Penny struck out six and walked one over seven innings in his first start at AT&T Park. He won at Philadelphia in impressive fashion Wednesday, two days after he signed with the Giants following his release by Boston.
Adrian Gonzalez hit a towering solo home run off Penny in the sixth, the slugger's second in as many games. Uribe tripled to start the second and scored on a wild pitch by Clayton Richard (4-2) to put the Giants ahead, then homered in the team's five-run third. After Uribe's two-run shot, Renteria gave San Francisco its fifth set of consecutive home runs this season.
Uribe hit a three-run shot in the seventh for his eighth career multihomer game.
Pablo Sandoval and Bengie Molina also drove in runs for the Giants, who started off a key homestand against the division. The first-place Dodgers come to town this weekend followed by the Rockies early next week. In all, San Francisco is in a stretch with 21 of 25 games against NL West foes -- more remaining against the division than both the Dodgers and Rockies.
