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Giants beat Marlins, clinch a road series. Now, can they start a winning streak?

Evan Webeck, Bay Area News Group on

Published in Baseball

MIAMI — Keaton Winn was in tip-top form, the Giants provided him just enough run support, and they beat the Marlins, 3-1, to clinch their first series win of the season away from Oracle Park.

Now comes the hard part.

“Have we won two games in a row yet?” manager Bob Melvin pondered before first pitch Wednesday morning.

Yes, but just once, and not since their first series of the season, stringing together wins in the second and third games in San Diego.

“To get out of these little funks that we’re in, it usually takes a little bit of a winning streak,” Melvin said. “Confidence rises and you’re able to gain some momentum. We just haven’t had a ton of traction as far as that’s gone yet, so it’s been a little frustrating for everybody.”

No better time than now to start a winning streak.

 

When the Giants return home Thursday to host the Diamondbacks, they’ll have the top two finishers in last year’s Cy Young voting on the hill the first two games. They should have plenty of motivation to top Winn’s stellar showing that shut down Miami’s lineup on Wednesday.

The lone damage against Winn over six innings came on a sinker down and away that Bryan De La Cruz snuck over the right-field wall for a solo shot in his final frame. That was one of only four hits the Marlins mustered against him, and the first and only time a runner advanced past first base.

“Down and away, but he’s been hot the last couple games in that area. Later in the count, it’s something I was trying to go in on and missed down and away,” Winn said of the home run offering to De La Cruz. But overall, “I finally felt great out there. Mechanically, I was more lined up, so it was easier to command the baseball.”

Winn was cruising, using only 63 pitches to complete five scoreless, before the first batter of the sixth, Luis Arraez, lined a ball right back at him. It glanced off the bottom of his cleat, and Thairo Estrada recovered to record an impressive out, but Winn wasn’t quite the same after.

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