SAN FRANCISCO — During his pregame session with reporters Saturday night, Giants manager Bruce Bochy was asked if he considered throwing all his younger reserves — the “shock troops” — into the breach.

“No,” Bochy said. “The guys out there are a big reason we’re here.”
A few more nights like this and the Giants’ labors in 2009 will be neither here nor there. A lineup of staid veterans provided a few shocking moments, none of them pleasant, as the Los Angeles Dodgers knocked out Jonathan Sanchez and put up their feet in a 9-1 victory at AT&T Park.
It was shocking to see Aaron Rowand take a hanging curveball down the middle for a third strike. It was shocking to see Randy Winn get overpowered by 94 mph fastballs and Edgar Renteria founder twice to end potential rallies.
And it’s shocking that a major league club could be this bad, for so long, in the clutch.
In two losses to their archrivals, the Giants are 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position. In their past 31 games, they’re hitting .185 in those situations.
The Giants have fallen far, fast and hard. They are 8 1/2 games behind the Dodgers in the NL West and remained 5 1/2 games behind Colorado for the wild card only because the Rockies couldn’t pull out another late-inning victory at San Diego.
The Giants swamped the airwaves with a “We’re in this thing” campaign, and Pablo Sandoval insisted the clubhouse still believes in the slogan.
“We’re still close,” Sandoval said. “We’ve got 20 games. You don’t know what can happen. We talk about it every second: ’We can do this.”’ Their deeds haven’t matched their words in two games against the Dodgers. They’ve been outscored 19-4 and outhit 23-9.
“This is the last thing we wanted to happen,” Bochy said. “It’s a tough game, to get beat up like this. We still have a chance. It’s time to regroup, punch back, whatever it takes.” At least Brad Penny should be ornery on the mound today when he faces his former team.
The Giants’ other two pennant stretch additions, Freddy Sanchez and Ryan Garko, have made virtually no impact. They weren’t in the lineup for a must-win game and the Giants can’t say with certainty that either player will be a long-term fit.
Renteria and Rowand are under contract, however. And given the money owed to both players, the Giants have to hope Renteria’s offseason elbow surgery will fix his swing, and that Rowand hasn’t burned out into a bench player with three years and $36 million remaining on his deal.
Every team leans on its veterans in a pennant race, and the Giants’ corps just hasn’t been strong enough. They posed little obstacle to Vicente Padilla, a waiver pickup who seemed to be toying with them as he spun off 54 mph curveballs.
The teams traded unearned runs before Sanchez appeared to lose his concentration in the fourth. After a walk and a single, he threw a 3-1 fastball to Russell Martin, who rediscovered his missing power stroke with a three-run home run that sailed just inside the left field pole.