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Ty Blach stepped up, deserved better in Colorado homecoming

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It’s the middle of June, and already, the Giants don’t have much to play for.

Less than halfway through the season, rare is the day when Giants players can wake up in the morning and head to the park with a sense of urgency, as the chance to play “must-win” ballgames will elude them in 2017.

But Sunday was one of those days, and for left-hander Ty Blach, the window of opportunity was as wide open as the gap between the Giants and Rockies in the National League West standings.

The Denver, Colorado native returned home this weekend to Coors Field –the ballpark his parents took him to as a Little Leaguer– to make a Father’s Day start in front of his dad, Randy, and roughly 100 other family members and friends.

And against a first-place Rockies team that has torched San Francisco’s pitching staff this season, Blach delivered.

The 26-year-old left-hander’s stat line from his Sunday outing reads as understated as a Hemingway novel, but to watch Blach pitch, and to read Ernest’s words, is to understand the sincerity of their efforts.

For a Giants’ team that surrendered at least five runs in each of its last five contests, Blach gutted through a memorable performance that required every bit of stamina and focus the 6-foot-2, 200-pounder possesses.

Through six innings on Sunday, Blach danced around the corners with a fastball that topped out at 92 MPH, and kept hitters off balance with a sharp changeup he used as an out pitch en route to a season-high five strikeouts.

A Rockies’ team that collected 31 hits off the first three Giants starters in the series had few answers for Blach, who gave up just a lone extra base hit, a double to third baseman Nolan Arenado, through six innings.

For a Giants team that has authored few memorable moments this season, Blach was penning a Father’s Day classic, and one his team so desperately needed to write.

But in the seventh inning, Giants’ skipper Bruce Bochy tried to extract every last strike Blach had to offer, and Blach couldn’t finish the chapter.

With one out, the aptly named Rockies’ shortstop, Trevor Story, rewrote the ending to Blach’s day with a towering solo home run into the left-field bleachers to tie the score. Two batters later, pinch hitter Pat Valaika turned on a fastball that missed off the inside corner, and rocketed it beyond the left-field fence to give the Rockies the lead.

The pitch Story clobbered was a clear mistake from Blach, but the fastball Valaika slammed was hardly an offering Blach would want back.

In the end, it didn’t matter, as Blach hit the showers on the hook for the Giants’ sixth straight loss.

To watch Blach pitch on Sunday was to see what Bochy’s club has been missing this season. As I wrote in my game recap, Blach doesn’t have Madison Bumgarner-type stuff, but that’s not going to keep him from success.

Imagine a pitcher with the passion and fire of a closer, with the durability and touch of a starter, and that’s what you get with Blach. The Creighton product is never going to win a Cy Young and he’ll probably never be an All-Star, but in the midst of an otherwise forgettable Giants season, Blach has emerged as an A-1 gamer.

There’s a competitive desire in Blach the Giants have been missing, and it’s increasingly obvious there’s a different vibe when he’s on the mound.

Because Blach doesn’t have a blow-you-away arsenal or favorable advanced analytics, perhaps time will catch up to him sooner than most, and he’ll be just another left-hander that scouting reports finally figured out.

But in the interim, Ty Blach is a pitcher the Giants need to run out to the hill every five days.

On Sunday, it was Blach’s turn to reverse the team’s fortunes, and for much of the day, he looked like a player holding the winning ticket.

Even after exiting with a deficit, Blach was still a primary architect of what could have turned into a rare masterpiece from the Giants. In the top of the ninth inning, Hunter Pence connected on his first career pinch hit home run to give the Giants a 4-3 lead, and Brandon Crawford came through with his third run batted in of the day to add insurance.

But in the bottom of the ninth inning, Giants’ closer Mark Melancon blew his fourth save opportunity of the season, allowing a dramatic walk-off home run to Arenado, who completed the cycle with a three-run bomb that sent the Rockies to their first four-game sweep of the Giants in franchise history.

Melancon’s meltdown cost the Giants both a moral and a tangible victory, and cost Blach an opportunity to send his dad home with a ‘W.’

Though there’s more to life –and more to baseball– than just wins and losses, Ty and Randy Blach deserved to share the gift of a victory at Coors Field, and this Father’s Day, the Giants couldn’t wrap the present.