By Morris Phillips

As hard as it’s been to watch–believe the worn look on Bob Melvin’s face–it’s been even harder to be in uniform and personally experience the A’s two-month slide that has them on the brink of missing the playoffs.

Melvin spoke incredulously when trying to digest the oddball accomplishment of the Phillies’ Jerome Williams who shut down the A’s on Saturday to become the first player since 1900 to beat a team three times in one season while playing for a different team in each win.

“We’ve been struggling for a while, and this was a guy we had really good numbers off of. Most of our guys had really good numbers off him,” Melvin said.

Williams was the pitcher of record on April 26 when the Astros broke open a tie game with four runs in the eighth inning. The former Giant picked up the win in that one even as he gave back three runs in the A’s furious, ninth-inning rally that came up just short.

Then on July 25, Williams belied his 5.52 ERA at the time and shut down the A’s as a starter for Texas in the Rangers’ 4-1 win in Arlington. The journeyman was released by the Astros only to sign a minor league deal with Texas, which would then become the Williams’ sixth major league team.

But on Saturday, Williams was a member of the Phillies, and he admitted that he had anticipated his matchup with Oakland with knowledge of the historical opportunity that awaited him.

“Obviously I was with the AL West, so I knew I was going to face them, but coming over to the Phillies in interleague play, you didn’t think you were going to face the team again,” Williams said. “It’s a good feat.”

Interleague feats against Oakland are nothing new to Williams. He picked up the first two wins of his big league career against the A’s as a Giant in 2003. Now, he’s 32, and still possessing a viable, big league arm, but he’s never really stuck anywhere, having played bits and pieces of eight seasons at the major league level.

On Saturday, Williams shut down the A’s for seven innings with the help of a couple of timely double play balls. The offensively woeful A’s were shut out for the sixth time in their last 47 games. Needing to win desperately to maintain their spot as the lead wild card team, Oakland fell to 1-4 on their final home stand of the season.

“One thing we do well is, when we think we’ve hit rock bottom, we’ve come back with a vengeance. We control our own destiny. I think, if we play the good baseball that we know how to play, we’re going to be there at the end,” catcher Derek Norris said.

Of course, the A’s did have help on Saturday. The Royals lost in Detroit, and the Mariners fell to Houston to keep Oakland on top of the heap, and in line to host a one-game playoff a week from Tuesday.

On Sunday, Scott Kazmir takes the mound at the O.co Coliseum in a matchup with 18-game loser A.J. Burnett at 1:05pm.