Gary Peterson

In his second at-bat against the Colorado Rockies on Sunday, Barry Bonds stroked a single to center field. It snapped an 0-for-17 skid for Bonds, spread over seven games. The Giants were 3-4 in those games.

In his third at-bat Sunday, Bonds hammered his first home run since May 8 (and the 746th of his career). That snapped homerless droughts spanning 43 at-bats for Bonds (his longest since 1998), and 16 games for the team. The Giants were 7-9 in those games.

Those may seem like piddling downturns for a baseball team, especially in the short term. They’re not quite so piddling when you prorate them over a 162-game season. Then, a 3-4 record projects to 93 losses, while 7-9 projects to 91.

The last time the Giants lost more than 87 games was 1996.

Apparently it makes a difference for the Giants when Bonds is on his offensive game.

It made a difference Sunday. Not a big enough difference, but a difference just the same. Bonds’ homer cut a 4-1 deficit to 4-3. Two innings later, Bengie Molina sliced a game-tying single. The hit scored Fred Lewis, who had moved from first base into scoring position when Bonds walked.

Alas, the Giants eventually fell, 6-4 in 10 innings to suffer a three-game sweep at the hands of the last-place Rockies. But not until a pair of truisms you might have suspected all along established themselves as out-and-out immutable laws of nature:

One, Bonds has to be on his offensive game for the Giants to have a chance to win. And two, if Bonds isn’t on his offensive game, he isn’t of much use to the team.

A few other things happened Sunday. Colorado’s Troy Tulowitzki singled down the left-field line. Only Tulowitzki, seeing Bonds chugging to his right to field the ball, never stopped running. He dove into second base ahead of Bonds’ decidedly subsonic throw, with a hustle double.

Tulowitzki scored when the next batter, Chris Iannetta, blistered a triple to deepest, darkest right-center field which, frankly, could have scored Bonds himself from first. But another immutable law had been reinforced — Bonds is a liability on defense.

This was proven again when the Rockies’ Todd Helton led off the eighth with a drive down the left field line. Bonds chased it down and played it on a hop, but before he could stop on his shop-worn knees, he was up against the retaining wall and leaning over into the crowd. Helton could have somersaulted into second base.

In the 10th inning, Bonds made his only catch of the game, snagging Jamey Carroll’s drive on the dead run. The Bonds of 10 years ago would have been standing there waiting for the ball as it came down.

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