SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- For years, Matt Cain had been the staff workhorse for the San Francisco Giants. But that was before 2014, a season in which he landed on the disabled list three separate times before finally undergoing season-ending surgery on his right elbow in August to remove bone chips present since high school. He subsequently had his right ankle operated upon. But with two shutout innings in his spring debut, the right-hander's return to action could not have gone much better.

"That went really good. I've been trying to think a lot lately about getting in the right rhythm, trying to get everything in the same groove," Cain said.

"I didn't have too many expectations, but I thought he looked great. The bullpen session before the game was very smooth and controlled, and then it carried over into the game," catcher Buster Posey observed. "Everything seems very smooth and effortless right now. It's got to be a great feeling for him."

"That first time out, that was very impressive," manager Bruce Bochy said. "Obviously, we're very happy with his first outing. He had good command, good stuff. For the layoff he had, that was an impressive two innings for him."

Coming into the game with a pitch count of around 30 pitches -- "30 and a half," Cain cracked -- he wound up throwing just 20 to blank the Los Angeles Dodgers in his first two innings of the spring.

"I threw everything -- fastball, curveball, a couple sliders, changeups," Cain said. "That was enough, that was the intensity, coming out of the bullpen, getting up, down, up, down -- that was the first time we've had to do that. A lot of times it's been getting warm in the bullpen and wait a little bit and then go throw live BP or whatever. [Today] was almost like three simulated innings."

But just to spice things up a bit, it was against a Dodgers spring lineup stocked with regulars.

"It was even better, facing these guys. To get out there and get the butterflies, to get the extra adrenaline going, it was nice," Cain said. "I want to go out there and compete and throw against those guys because we're going to see them a ton."

Anticipating how he might have to manage his comeback from injury, Cain said he'd have to be careful in-season, noting, "I might just try to watch it, maybe days after starting and in between starts, maybe just to watch the intensity of how hard I'm trying to throw, trying to not waste them playing catch."

Asked about throwing without the bone chips that had been with him his entire pro career, Cain said, "it’s not really any different," before joking, "I have more range of motion because I don't have so many doorstops in there."

But surgery should improve the extension in his throwing arm, something he hasn't had going for him for a decade, potentially changing his stuff and his feel for it. In Monday's game, were pitches coming off his hand differently now that he has better extension?

"They might be, but it's nothing too drastic because it was so much time between -- from not throwing to being able to throw -- probably almost four to five months," Cain said. "It might have been a lot different if it was just two weeks where I'd all of a sudden got a whole lot of range of motion."

Fans and the Giants organization hope he will be able to return and resume his status as a staff workhorse -- a sentiment that is clearly shared by Cain.

"I've said at FanFest that I felt like I'd underperformed the past couple years and that I needed to go out there and do it for myself," Cain said. "I want to go out there and throw 200 innings. I want to go out there and give those guys a chance to win every fifth day."

"It would be a huge boost, having him back," Posey said. "The ability for him to go out and pitch like he did for us today will be good, not just for us, but for him, too. I'm sure he was fighting through a lot of pain last year and who knows how far back it's gone. Hopefully he can pitch without it this year."

In his first full seven seasons in the Giants' rotation, Cain compiled an 83-77 record with a 3.30 ERA, averaging 32 starts and 212 innings pitched per season; he put up a quality start 65 percent of the time while striking out 20 percent of opposing hitters. He also managed to perplex analysts by making a habit of outperforming his FIP (3.63) in all seven seasons. But in the past two years, that changed: Although his strikeout rate stayed essentially the same (20.1 percent), his rate of allowing home runs on fly balls crested to a dangerous career high for the fly ball pitcher (almost 9 percent).

Hot corner smash: Third baseman Adam Duvall made a tremendous stop down the line on a Juan Uribe smash going to his right, followed by gunning a strong throw to first base. He also singled and walked.

"That was a great play he made," Bochy said after the game. "I think with Adam ... it's just getting the confidence. He's got a great arm, good hands, I know Ronnie [Wotus] is working hard with him at third base, we'll do the same with him at first. When you have a bat like this, it's intriguing. So we'll work him hard at both spots."

Duvall's D was especially notable because his glove has been cited as a problem that might handicap his utility to the team coming off the bench. But with his 100 home runs in 500 career minor league games and a .959 OPS with Triple-A Fresno last season, Duvall's potential value to the club as a power source at the corners is obvious. If he's also improving on defense, he becomes that much more of a factor for the Opening Day roster, especially with power being a potential early-season issue during Hunter Pence's time on the disabled list.

Vog-ing Coming into the game after Cain, back-end rotation option Ryan Vogelsong made his first appearance coming out of the bullpen this spring, tossing three innings but allowing a two-run homer to Yasiel Puig.

"It's an adjustment on his part, and it will be on our part," Bochy said. "We'll see where we're at the end of spring training. We're not doing anything etched in stone. We're getting him ready, stretched out for either the long man or [as a] starter."

Christina Kahrl writes about MLB for ESPN.com. You can follow her on Twitter.