By Morris Phillips

SAN FRANCISCO–Whether speed bump or cautionary tale, Monday’s 8-2 loss to the A’s was what it was for baseball’s hottest team. Another game looms tomorrow and another opportunity for the Giants to become the National League’s first 50-game winner this season outweighs a rare, lopsided result.

For Jeff Samardzija, things are a little more complicated. The Giants’ $90 million free agent acquisition completed a rough June on Monday, in which he had three abbreviated starts and allowed nine home runs, including Marcus Semien’s three-run job on Monday that highlighted the A’s five-run, second inning.

Somehow Samardzija needs to get his performances more in line with how his team is performing, something he says is attainable, despite the recent, rough outings.

“It’s just about eliminating those mistakes that come back to haunt you,” he said.

Samardzija had several in the second inning against the A’s, after he cruised through the first. The A’s struck for five runs on three extra base hits, two singles and a walk. For the 6’5” right hander, it was almost like, “where do I start?” in trying to assess the disaster of an inning.

The obvious, first choice would be Samardzija’s 1-2 offering to Semien, a capable hitter, but not a guy who’s going to make his living hitting for power in two-strike counts. But Samardzija threw Semien a slider that was intended to be outside and off the plate. Instead, the pitch was right down the middle of the plate and Semien crushed it.

Some good, some bad, Samardzija’s pattern was weaved through the entire outing, not just the second. Samardzija started seven of the first eight batters in the inning with a strike, but the first pitches didn’t set up outs. Instead, pitches that were supposed to be on the edges, caught too much of the plate prompting the pitcher to say “get your off-speed pitches in the strike zone and your two-strike pitches out of the zone.”

“The second inning got away from him,” Bochy recalled. “He lived in the heart of the plate and we paid for it.”

Samardzija would recover, retiring nine batters in a row to get through the third through fifth innings, before getting hit again in the sixth. Consecutive doubles by Yonder Alonso and Semien made it 6-0 before Billy Burns was intentionally walked to get to A’s starter Daniel Mengden, who was retired ending the inning and Samardzija’s evening.

The Giants had beaten the A’s 16 of 19 times at AT&T Park coming in, giving the Bridge Series some semblance of balance after it had gone decisively to the A’s for years. Last year, the Giants finally broke through, winning five of six. Monday’s wipeout was the Oakland response.

“We’ve had games like this, we just haven’t done it consistently,” manager Bob Melvin said. “We have the ability to do this. If you look at our offensive numbers as a whole and they’re not great–on base percentage, really across the board—and then you look in the lineup, and you say, we should probably do a little bit more.”

Mengden picked up his first big league win after three losses, reinforcing what Melvin had said throughout, that the quirky rookie with the handlebar moustache belongs. Mengden retired the first 12 hitters of the evening, and allowed just two hits through seven. In the eighth, the Giants scored twice during which Mengden gave way to the Oakland bullpen, a task that even the incendiary A’s relief core could handle.

The A’s have won four of five, while the Giants have won 13 of 16 despite the loss.

On Tuesday, Albert Suarez tries to capture his fourth win in five decisions in a matchup with Kendall Graveman at 7:15pm.