SAN FRANCISCO — Lose the heavy beard, stocky frame and thick Staten Island accent and Jason Marquis would be your typical boy next door.
Typical, if that kid threw a sinkerball made of lead and could pitch nine innings of five-hit baseball as Marquis did Saturday in the Rockies’ 5-1 victory over the Giants.
“He’s the ultimate competitor and you want him to have the ball,” said Ryan Spilborghs, who backed up Marquis with two home runs and two stolen bases. “It’s like the Little League kid who wants to do everything. You see it when he’s hitting, you see it when’s he’s pitching. He’s trying to make plays off the mound. It’s awesome.”
That’s an apt adjective for Marquis’ performance on Saturday and the first month of the season. He’s been everything the Rockies hoped for when they traded reliever Luis Vizcaino to the Chicago Cubs in the offseason to obtain him.
The 30-year-old right-hander always comes to the mound with an “I’ll-show-you attitude,” but he said he’s in an especially good place now because the Rockies have his back.
“I think more than anything, I feel like I don’t have to look over my shoulder if something goes wrong,” said Marquis, who improved to 4-1 and dropped his ERA to 3.31. “I feel like if I make a mistake, there aren’t going to be two guys warming up in the fourth or fifth inning. I feel like, not only my teammates, but management and front office, are behind me 100 percent.”
In previous stints in Atlanta, St. Louis and Chicago, Marquis was frequently stepped over for games on the big stage and he still feels the sting of that. Though his previous teams made the playoffs in nine seasons, Marquis has just 10 postseason games on his resume.
“I just know that I am battling in every game possible to give my team a chance to win,” he said. “The rest of it is out of my hands. I’m a competitor, I’m a grinder.”
Saturday he ground the Giants’ bats to kindling. His sinker induced 14 groundball outs and his slider and changeup yielded four strikeouts. The only blemish on this 2-hour, 26-minute Mona Lisa was a solo home run by Pablo Sandoval leading off the ninth. That blast to right field spoiled Marquis’ chance for the third shutout of his career.
“It would have been nice to get a complete-game shutout, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want it,” he said. “But I just went back to throwing strikes and finished what I started.”
It’s not as if the Giants didn’t know what Marquis’ M.O. was coming in. After all, he is now 4-1 vs. San Francisco with a 2.41 ERA. Nonetheless, the Giants played right into his hands.
“We pounded a lot of balls into the ground,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. “We didn’t create too many good opportunities.”
The Rockies, winners of four of their last six, knocked around Giants starter Matt Cain with a series of timely shots.
Spilborghs led off the game with a home run into the left-field bleachers on Cain’s second pitch of the game. Spilborghs added a two-run shot over the center-field wall in the fifth, putting Colorado in front 4-0. It was the fourth multi-homer run game of Spilborghs’ career.
Brad Hawpe, starting for the first time since suffering a bruised neck on Monday, rocketed a leadoff solo homer to right in the sixth inning, extending the Rockies’ lead to 5-0.
Patrick Saunders: 303-954-1428 or psaunders@denverpost.com
