The first place Padres refuse to slow down. San Diego increased its division lead on Monday night by beating the Dodgers. Now, it's up to the Giants to keep pace. The Giants trail the Padres by two games.
The Giants return to Denver Tuesday as a different team. They were well out of the NL West race when they stumbled out of Denver last month. Improved play against divisional foes has the NL wild card-leading Giants in a much better position to begin this two-game series at Coors Field.
San Francisco continues its push for the division lead Tuesday when it faces the Colorado Rockies.
After dropping three of four in Denver from July 1-4, the Giants (61-45) were 7 1/2 games behind division-leading San Diego and 9-20 versus the NL West.
San Francisco, though, has made up substantial ground. The Giants, who have gone 9-1 against NL West opponents and won 20 of 25 overall, capped their first Bay Area sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in six years with a 2-0 victory Sunday.
"We'll be talking about this quite a bit ... but if we're going to get this accomplished we need to play better against our division," said manager Bruce Bochy.
The Giants, winners of 12 of 14 on the road since last month's series at Colorado, open their six-game trip with Jonathan Sanchez (7-6, 3.54 ERA) on the mound. Looking for his first victory since July 5, the left-hander is trying to rebound from one of his worst outings of the season. Sanchez went six innings, yielding a season high-tying five runs and seven hits in Wednesday's 10-9, 10-inning victory over Florida.
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He faces a Rockies team batting .381 and averaging 10.0 runs during its four-game winning streak. Colorado (55-50) hit .222 and scored 17 total runs while losing its previous eight.
