By Morris Phillips

Maybe free-agent to-be Chris Davis will consider a true change of scenery in the off-season and sign with a National League contender after spending all seven of big league seasons with Baltimore and Texas.

The A’s bullpen probably hopes that’s Davis’ preference, with Japan as his backup plan.

The big slugger outdid himself Saturday, with a pair of homers including the game-winner in the bottom of the ninth—a circus shot if you will, with Davis reaching across the plate and finishing his swing with one hand.

Switch-pitching reliever Pat Venditte watched with disbelief and disgust as Davis’ shot ended up in the first row of seats in right center.  While Venditte’s location on the pitch—low and away—was desirable, his choice lacked originality.  Venditte had thrown similar sliders on the two previous pitches, and Davis appeared ready to attack with force on the final pitch.

“I had a pretty good scouting report after I saw Parra’s at-bat,” Davis said. “The last pitch I hit was actually a good pitch.  I was just trying to put the barrel on it and give myself a chance.”

“It’s off the plate away, and he ended up one-handing it out of the park,” manager Bob Melvin said.

Davis has six homers in his last six games.  He’s second in home runs to Nelson Cruz and leads all of baseball with 88 RBI.  Davis also victimized the A’s on August 5 with his 10^th inning, grand slam that propelled Baltimore past the A’s, 7-3.

The A’s lost a close one on the game’s final swing for the second consecutive night.  Manny Machado’s 13^th inning blast decided Friday’s series opener.  The results left the A’s weary and uncomfortable being saddled with the major’s worst record in one-run games.  The A’s fell to a big-league worst 13-27 in one-run games.

The A’s fell to 0-5 on a road trip that’s didn’t figure to comfy, and has turned out to be downright rough.  Danny Valencia was a late scratch Saturday with hamstring tightness.  And Sonny Gray hasn’t pitched at all on this road swing—a terrible spot for the Cy Young candidate to miss out on valuable East Coast media exposure—although he is a possibility for a start in Monday’s wraparound finale in Baltimore.

Then when you throw in whatever weather front is hoovering over the Eastern seaboard that obviously visited Boston earlier Saturday (final score: Boston 22, Seattle 10) and seemed to gravitate to Baltimore Saturday night, you know that local nine is anticpating their flight into Oakland Tuesday morning.

After the first run Saturday night was scored on Mark Canha’s ground out with the speedy Billy Burns breaking from third, the final six runs of the ballgame all came on home runs.

Oakland starter Chris Bassitt appeared most immune to all of the flying baseballs eventhough he admitted after the game he was under the weather.  Along with reliever Fernando Abad, Bassitt has become the Athletic of the moment to watch with his confounding curveball and consistent performances.  Bassitt went a career-best eight innings Saturday, and for the most part kept the sellout crowd at Camden Yards stuck to their sticky seats.

But even Bassitt had issues, allowing Davis’ first home run of the night on a poorly-located fastball, and and a solo shot to Gerardo Parra in the sixth.  Other than that, Bassitt barely allowed a baserunner, and may have had his finest outing to date.

But all went to waste when Davis’ unlikely home run was launched.

On the A’s postgame show telecast, Bip Roberts felt that given the same pitch and location from Venditte, Davis would only be able to muscle one out on one of ten swings.  Unfortunately, that one swing was the one from Saturday night.

On Sunday, Kendall Graveman gets a shot to end his four-game slide in a matchup with Wei-Yin Chin at 10:35am in the Bay Area.