SF Giants Press Clips Saturday, May 20, 2017 San Francisco Chronicle Giants notes: On the pitchers behind Friday’s comeback win Henry Schulman ST. LOUIS — Some Giants pitching notes from Friday night's 6-5 comeback victory over the Cardinals: The starter: Before the trip, manager Bruce Bochy told reporters the starting pitchers need to be better on the road if the Giants were to improve on their 6-15 record. Matt Moore took that to heart, holding the Cardinals to two runs in six innings to lower that 10.50 road ERA. Nobody articulated that to the starters specifically. "That's one of those messages you don't have to send," Moore said. "It's clear we were losing a lot of games on the road, and not a lot of games were 1-0 or 2-0." Moore credited a good curveball and changeup to go with his fastball. The winning pitcher: Bryan Morris pitched a 1-2-3 eighth for the win, striking out Yadier Molina and Aledmys Diaz to start the inning. Morris is quickly becoming one of the more trusted members of this bullpen. The 30-year-old former Pirate and Marlin has pitched six consecutive scoreless outings, most notably his three- inning stint in the 17-inning win against the Reds. 1 He allowed five runs in two innings over his first two games, but that was understandable. He had pitched in only five minor-league games, two at San Jose and three at Sacramento, before the Giants brought him up sooner than they had hoped to replace an ineffective Neil Ramirez. Morris was rehabbing a right foot fracture. That was caused by a comebacker during live batting practice in spring training after missing some exhibition games with back spasms. (He had back surgery last year.) The batter that spring day was Juan Ciriaco, who was playing for Sacramento when Morris arrived for his rehab stint. "I got to Sacramento and he apologized to me for 10 minutes," Morris said. "I said, 'Hey, I was the one who threw the pitch.'" Morris, who signed a minor-league deal with the Giants over the winter, throws a power sinker and said Friday's was his best so far. The closer: Mark Melancon earned his 175th career save in his 456th game, yet he was still nervous. This was his first appearance since May 3 and his subsequent trip to the disabled list with a strained pronator muscle in his forearm. "I had a little bit of jitters in my legs, definitely," Melancon said. "It was exciting, fun, especially the way the game played out. We showed some fight late in the game. I enjoyed those jitters." The pronator is a muscle that gets stressed when a person rotates his arm while throwing. The other day at home, Melancon told me he has had this injury before. I get the sense it can be chronic, but he said Friday he feels so much better now. While acknowledging he can feel it sometimes after he pitches, Melancon said, "I'm saying I'm 100 percent." And about Eduardo Nuñez's helmet: He can't keep the thing on. Whenever he runs it flies off. You'd think there's an easy fix for that. 2 "They make chin straps," Moore said with a big grin. San Francisco Chronicle Giants roster likely to change soon as players come off DL Henry Schulman ST. LOUIS — The Giants opened their seven-game trip with eight relief pitchers and a four-man bench that includes one guy who only catches ( Nick Hundley ), another who will play only first base ( Michael Morse ) and two extra outfielders ( Justin Ruggiano and Gorkys Hernandez ). “We are limited,” manager Bruce Bochy acknowledged Friday. The makeup of the team soon will change, and probably drastically. The Giants will need to make room for rehabbing players Conor Gillaspie , Aaron Hill and Hunter Pence , perhaps all three sometime next week. Bochy said ideally the Giants will restore a five-man bench at the expense of a current reliever. Left-hander Josh Osich and outfielder Mac Williamson are most at risk amid all the pending moves because they have minor-league options. But at some point the organization will have to make decisions on out-of-option players, unless they mirror other teams and use the shorter 10-day disabled list as a merry-go-round for players to hop on and off. Bochy said Gillaspie (back spasms) was to begin a rehab assignment for Triple-A Sacramento on Friday and is the closest to returning, followed by Hill (strained forearm). Pence (hamstring strain) can be activated Tuesday, but that is not likely. He hit and threw on the field at Busch Stadium on Friday but has not begun to run. Reliever hitched: Cory Gearrin did not fly with the team to St. Louis. He arrived on a delayed commercial flight at 4 a.m. Friday for good reason. He and Maddi Reynolds got married at San Francisco City Hall on Thursday morning on the balcony outside the mayor’s office, with County Clerk Catherine Stefani officiating. Giants players have made the rounds at some big offseason weddings. Derek Law , Joe Panik and Pence all got hitched last winter. “I didn’t want to wait,” Gearrin said. “We really wanted to get married. We didn’t want to wait around for six months.” 3 None of Gearrin’s teammates attended the wedding or the lunch that followed at Slanted Door. They were taking off for St. Louis about the time of the wedding, although Pence’s wife, Lexi , was among the 20 guests. Gearrin said City Hall held special meaning because he knew the Giants celebrated their three World Series titles there, before he signed. Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. On deck Saturday at Cardinals 4:15 p.m. Channel: 2 Channel: 40 Samardzija (1-5) vs. Martinez (3-3) Sunday at Cardinals 11:15 a.m. NBCSBA Cain (3-1) vs. Wainwright (3-3) Monday at Cubs 5:05 p.m. NBCSBA Blach (1-2) vs. Hendricks (3-2) Leading off Thrilling ball: The Giants and Cardinals are ranked first and second in the majors with 17 and 15 sacrifice flies, respectively. 4 San Francisco Chronicle Giants stun Cardinals in ninth, win opener of trip Henry Schulman ST. LOUIS — The Giants were frozen in the postgame-celebration position waiting for the umpires to confirm by video that Mark Melancon indeed got Dexter Fowler to hit into a double play to end a 6-5 victory over the Cardinals on Friday night. “It didn’t matter,” manager Bruce Bochy said with a smile. “We were shaking hands.” The Giants deserved it after twice coming from behind, the last time on Eduardo Nuñez’s biggest hit of the year, a one-out, two-run double in the ninth inning against closer Seung-Hwan Oh. Oh had not allowed an earned run in more than a month nor blown a save since Opening Day. The Giants went two years without winning when behind entering the ninth. Now they have done it in consecutive road games. They have won seven of their past nine games overall. Melancon earned the save in his first appearance since coming off the disabled list. Fowler had been a tough out. He tripled and scored against Matt Moore to help the Cardinals take a 2-0 lead. After the Giants took the lead with three runs in the seventh, in a rally bisected by a 46-minute rain delay, Fowler crushed a three-run homer off George Kontos in the bottom half to give the Cardinals a 5-3 lead. Melancon had been on the shelf since May 9 with a forearm strain. Asked to assess what he saw while he sat, he said the first several days looked like the weeks before, in which his new team looked nothing like contenders. But over the past week? 5 “We showed what I thought this team had for years: fight, courage and will,” Melancon said. “Tonight we showed all of that.” The Giants’ first rally, a three-run seventh, followed six shutout innings from Michael Wacha, who was pulled out of an abundance of caution over chronic shoulder injuries. Nuñez and Christian Arroyo started the rally against reliever Jonathan Broxton with singles. Third baseman Jedd Gyorko committed an error, on which one run scored. Denard Span singled home the tying run, and Joe Panik provided a 3-2 lead on a soft groundout after Matt Bowman thought he had a strikeout on the 2-2 pitch. A similar call on a pitch to Brandon Belt led to St. Louis manager Mike Matheny’s ejection just as a torrent hit Busch Stadium and the grounds crew was tarping the field. Matheny appeared to bump umpire Nic Lentz, grounds for suspension. Matheny’s frown turned upside down after Steven Okert walked Kolten Wong to start the seventh, Jhonny Peralta singled and Fowler cracked his three-run homer off Kontos, who owns three of the Giants’ seven blown saves. To win on the road consistently, a team must be relentless, and the Giants were. They scored one run in the eighth on Span’s second RBI single to close the gap to 5-4, with Arroyo and pinch-hitter Michael Morse singling ahead of him. Then, Belt and Brandon Crawford each singled off Oh in the ninth for their third hits before Nuñez slammed a cutter over Fowler’s head to the center-field wall, delivering the tying and go- ahead runs.