SAN DIEGO -- A weight was lifted for Ryan McMahon and the Rockies with his two-run, eighth-inning double that gave the Rockies a 4-2 victory over the Padres on Sunday afternoon at Petco Park.

The Rockies, who began the year with an unexpectedly strong 16-11 record, had gone a franchise-record 35 games without winning two in a row before McMahon’s hit backed up a 6-2 victory in the second game of a doubleheader on Saturday. And the 4-3 road trip -- a series win at San Francisco and a split at San Diego -- marked the first winning trip of more than one city this season.

• Box score

McMahon needed it as much as the team. The first months of a five-year, $70 million contract extension signed during Spring Training haven’t gone smoothly. He’s hitting .236 with four home runs, but none in his last 91 at-bats. It’s harder to explain because recent games have been a string of solid at-bats, but poor fortune.

“Nothing feels better than coming through for your teammates, keeping the game from going to extras and giving your team the lead late in the game,” said McMahon, whose hit meant a teammate with his own well-documented struggles, Germán Márquez (seven innings, two runs, six strikeouts), was rewarded with his second straight win.

It wasn’t an easy assignment.

Padres righty Luis García froze him on a split-finger pitch to push the count to 1-2. García repeated the pitch, but McMahon roped the ball past first baseman Eric Hosmer.

“It was big for Mac,” Rockies manager Bud Black said. “You know how he feels about this team, and his responsibility. It was a really good swing.”

McMahon tries not to make issues such as the contract, which is connected to his status and responsibility, become weighty.

“It’s more like perception from you guys and the outside,” McMahon said. “In the clubhouse, it's just me and the boys. We’re playing some baseball, so you leave it at that. Just go out there with your buddies, cheer each other on and pull for each other.”

McMahon and “the boys” performed more the way the Rockies believe they can, not what their record shows.

Márquez rolled through the Padres' lineup until Luke Voit’s fifth-inning solo homer on a high slider. The Padres tied the game at 2 in the seventh, but Márquez escaped by forcing a Jorge Alfaro double-play grounder.

McMahon and second baseman Brendan Rodgers had diving plays in the infield. Left fielder Yonathan Daza, who had three hits, made the key defensive play by leaping and reaching into the stands to rob Ha-Seong Kim of a homer.

“I’ll have to buy him dinner,” Márquez quipped.

Daza answered, “There’s a good place we can go, and I can order a steak.”

Maybe there is room for a third guy. Daza sounded as if he wanted to bring McMahon along.

“That’s the guy you want in that situation,” Daza said. “He’s really good. He’s the man.”