Old 1-2 Punches Out Rockies This Time : Baseball: Colorado’s dubious strategy and bad defense generously help Giants to 2-0 victory.

Debatable strategy by Colorado Rocky Manager Don Baylor contributed to one run Saturday. Bad defense by second baseman Eric Young led to the other.

Dissect a 2-0 loss to the San Francisco Giants any way you want, Baylor said, and it still comes down to this:

“If you lose a game 1-0 or 2-0, if you don’t score, it doesn’t matter which pitcher I bring in or when. We talk about being an offensive club, but we can’t get one run.”

Rookie Jamie Brewington, 4-4 and carrying a 4.78 earned-run average, overcame four walks and a hit batter to hold the Rockies to two hits for six innings before Scott Service, Shawn Barton and Rod Beck combined on three hitless innings, retiring the last eight batters.

Strange business.

The Rockies, who lead the Dodgers by only half a game now in the National League West, lead the league in runs and team batting and have four players with 30 or more home runs. Yet they have been shut out 11 times. The only major league team to have been shut out more times (12) is the Dodgers.

“The wilder a guy is, the more effective he is against us,” Baylor said. “We have a better shot when the guy is around the plate. We’re just not very disciplined.

“The guy today, it was as if he was the veteran and we were the rookie. I don’t think we hit a ball hard all day. I don’t think we had a good swing.

“He walked some people, threw some pitches in the dirt, but we weren’t disciplined enough to make him walk more. We kept swinging at pitches out of the strike zone. That’s how you get shut out 11 times.”

Said Dante Bichette, hitless in four at-bats, three against Brewington: “We hadn’t seen him, and the scouting report was a little off. We were expecting more breaking balls, but he jammed me with fastballs and a hard slider.”

In his 12th major league start, Brewington, 23, was trying to break a three-game losing streak and prevent the Giants’ elimination from the division race.

The Rockies stranded seven runners in the first four innings and had only one runner after that. Rookie Bryan Rekar matched Brewington’s shutout until the Giants loaded the bases on a pair of singles and a walk in the sixth.

The batter was the left-handed-hitting Jeff Reed (.257). Baylor replaced the right-handed Rekar with left-hander Bryan Hickerson, knowing two things: Hickerson has basically been his mop-up guy, and right-hander Mark Carreon (.296) would pinch-hit for Reed. Hickerson entered with an 11.88 ERA in 17 appearances since being obtained from the Chicago Cubs. Opposing batters also were hitting .400 against him.

“I wanted the right-hander up there, the guy who doesn’t run well,” Baylor said, adding, “I can’t keep going to Steve Reed every day. Hickerson and the others have to make a contribution.”

Carreon broke the scoreless tie with a full-count single, and Baylor had to ask Reed to make his 67th appearance anyway. The reliable middle man got the final two outs, leaving the bases loaded and the Rockies trailing only 1-0.

It became 2-0 in the eighth when former Dodger Young lazily tried to backhand an inning-opening ground ball that kicked off his glove for a generously ruled single. A sacrifice and a bad-hop single ultimately cashed it in, and the Giants again proved that Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda had no reason to fear a letdown.