LOS ANGELES — If the wild-card race between the Giants and Colorado Rockies goes down to the final weekend, it’ll be decided in the unfriendliest of territories.

The Rockies finish at Dodger Stadium, where they’re 1-5 and have gotten thumped in the season series 3-12. And the Giants play at San Diego, where they’re 0-6 thus far.
But nobody expects the wild-card winner to back into the playoffs. The Rockies expect the Giants to hit a hot streak behind their superlative starting pitching. And the Giants have done enough scoreboard watching to know there’s probably another Rocky Mountain peak in Colorado’s season.
When the San Jose Mercury News asked players on both teams to compare their remaining schedules, they couldn’t discern an obvious advantage. The Rockies have nine home games; the Giants have seven. The Rockies have six games against clubs with winning records; the Giants have seven. The Giants have six games remaining with the Arizona Diamondbacks — three home, three away. The Rockies just have three at Phoenix.
And both teams finish the season on the road, in places they’d rather not be forced to play a must-win game.
The Rockies have the obvious upper hand, though. After salvaging a 4-3 victory Wednesday at AT&T Park, they re-established a 3›-game lead over the Giants — three better in the loss column — and might need to play only .500 the rest of the way. If they go 8-7, the Giants must finish 12-4 to force a one-game playoff at AT&T Park.
The Rockies are giving the Giants more credit than that, though.
“They’re going to be there,” said Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, a South Bay native. “They’re going to pitch. There’s no doubt about that. If they’re getting the kind of hitting they just had against us, they’ll be tough to beat. We’ll need good pitching performances, good defense and timely hitting.”
Giants manager Bruce Bochy said: “We’re in a situation where we need to win ballgames. It’s pretty simple.”
After finishing their trip in Arizona this weekend, the Rockies return home to play the Padres, Cardinals and Brewers.
“Jeez, how many nine-game homestands do they get to play?” Giants infielder Ryan Garko said.
The Giants have reason to be nervous. The Rockies are 45-27 at Coors Field — only the Giants have a better home record in the National League — and the Rockies were 9-1 on their previous homestand. They’d run away with the wild card, if they could do it again.
“We’re confident we can,” Rockies catcher Yorvit Torrealba. “We were the best team in baseball for more than two months. Everybody goes up and down. We just have to go back up again, and we will.”
Giants right-hander Brad Penny is pinning his hopes on the Cardinals’ dominant rotation taking care of business.
“That’s going to be a tough series for them, wherever it’s at,” Penny said.
There were some heated moments between the Giants and Rockies over the season series, which the Giants won 10-8. But there isn’t much smack talk between the clubs. That’s probably because neither team was expected to contend — especially the Rockies, whose 18-28 start led to the firing of manager Clint Hurdle on May 29 — and so the players on both sides respect what the other has achieved.
But Torrealba isn’t afraid to deliver an honest opinion, and he ventured one that could get tacked up somewhere in the Giants’ clubhouse.
“I don’t want to take anything away from them, but I believe we’re a better team,” Torrealba said. “They’ve got great pitching. I respect that. You have to give them credit for that. But we’ve shown the last three months we can win — and in a lot of different ways.”
The Giants have pennant-race experience in Bengie Molina, Juan Uribe, Aaron Rowand, Edgar Renteria, Randy Johnson and a few others. But their best and brightest — Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Pablo Sandoval — are experiencing the pressure for the first time.
Sandoval has increased his already plump strike zone in recent weeks. He’s batting .211 with two RBI and no home runs in his past 16 games (15 starts), and in a big situation Wednesday, he struck out on an eye-level fastball.
“We’ll go down fighting to the last pitch, whether we’re in it or not,” Cain said. “I know this team is going to be that way.”
The Rockies might be less prone to getting out of their zone. They’ve been here before. Just two years ago, they pulled off one of baseball’s all-time September surges to win the wild card.
“The majority of that team is here,” Tulowitzki said. “I’m not saying those guys don’t, but we know what to expect. I’ve got a lot of confidence in this team after all we’ve gone through, with a manager being fired, all the come-from-behind wins.
“The best thing about our team is we don’t quit, and no matter what the score is, you don’t ever know what’s going to happen.”