Alex Wood deals, Austin Slater has pinch-hit homer to lead Giants over Rockies

SAN FRANCISCO — This might not be the long-term plan to get the most out of Alex Wood, but using their $25-million lefty in relief is looking like a decent strategy right now.

For the second time in four tries while pitching out of the bullpen, Wood was spectacular on Saturday, when he shut down the Colorado Rockies over five innings as the Giants rolled to a 5-3 win in front of 34,568 at Oracle Park.

Wood, who is in the final year of a two-year, $25-million deal, relieved Ryan Walker in the third inning and took over the game. With a steady dose of sinkers and changeups, Wood held the Rockies scoreless on just three hits and one walk, striking out three.

When Wood is throwing strikes, the Giants are feeling good.

As wild as he’s been this year, there’s been one constant in his productive outings: the lack of walks. He’s allowed one walk or fewer in seven of his 13 outings this year. In those outings, he has a 2.63 ERA. He has a 7.15 ERA otherwise.

The 32-year-old has had a tough season that included a stint on the injured list with a back injury. But he thought he figured something out in his relief outing in Toronto on June 27, when he tossed five scoreless innings. He told reporters he made a change in his posture that allowed him to stay upright in his delivery and throw more strikes.

But it didn’t translate to his most recent outing in New York last weekend, when he struggled to grip the ball in the rain and couldn’t throw strikes, walked four and allowed four earned runs without completing two innings.

The inconsistent nature of Wood’s season has cost him a spot in the rotation, but the Giants like the way the matchups work with Wood pitching after a right-handed opener. Walker started the game, allowed two runs in two innings. Former Giants catcher Austin Wynns, who was designated for assignment earlier this year, hit a solo shot off Walker in the second inning for his first long ball of the season.

The Giants scored two in the first inning on a two-run, opposite-field blast by Michael Conforto. He got a high slider from Rockies starter Connor Seabold and poked it just far enough to left field, where the ball bounced off the top of the wall and into the stands for his 13th home run of the season.

And in the fourth, the Giants’ catchers produced a run when Patrick Bailey smoked a double to deep right-center and Blake Sabol slapped a line drive to center to score him, giving the Giants a 3-2 lead.

Wilmer Flores made a bold decision that nearly cost the Giants in the fifth inning, when he tried to turn a single into a double on a blooper into shallow left field. He was ruled out initially, but a challenge revealed Flores’ nifty slide to the back corner of the base snuck in just before the tag to put himself into scoring position.

Manager Gabe Kapler then turned to his bench and it paid off.

Kapler used Austin Slater to pinch-hit for Mike Yastrzemski with a premium matchup for the lefty-killing Slater against southpaw Brad Hand. Hand lobbed a juicy slider over the plate and Slater devoured it for a no-doubter, a two-run shot that gave the Giants shutdown bullpen a cushy three-run lead.

The Giants missed Slater when he began the year on the injured list, returned in late April and played for only two weeks before he got hurt again. But he’s played regularly since late May and has been crushing left-handers as a perfect platoon option to tandem with the left-handed hitting outfielders.