By: Eric He

OAKLAND – The A’s were denied a sweep in the Bay Bridge Series in convincing fashion, as the Giants rocked Dillon Overton in his second career start to salvage a game by the final of 12-6 on Thursday night.

Oakland was on a roll coming into the game at the Coliseum. The A’s had won six of seven and notched three straight impressive wins over the Giants, one of the best teams in the baseball.

But their winning ways came to streaking halt as Overton allowed 8 runs in just three innings pitched. A 6-run second inning was his undoing, and it started with a double by Madison Bumgarner — the first pitcher to bat for himself as a designated hitter since 1976 — to center field.

Though the other team was essentially giving up its designated hitter, Overton couldn’t just slide meatballs past Bumgarner.

“Yeah, for sure,” he said when asked if he treated Bumgarner just like another hitter. “He swings the bat like he’s an everyday position player. He swings with passion, he swings with heart. He’s trying to hit a home run every time he gets up there.”

Bumgarner’s hit set up a big inning. Later on, with the bases loaded and nobody out, Brandon Belt hit a ground-rule double to knock in a pair of runs. Buster Posey followed that with a 3-run homer, and for good measure, Brandon Crawford went back-to-back with a big fly to right field.

Overton struggled with commanding his changeup — his specialty pitch — and the Giants jumped all over it.

“His changeup’s his pitch,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Looks like he was just missing with some pitches that inning and got into some bad counts. Wasn’t really able to establish that pitch. He threw it over the plate and they hit them.”

Overton concurred: “When you’re behind in counts, usually I can throw the changeup anytime, anyplace. But tonight I didn’t have a good feel for it. It was hard to throw it in for a strike, and when I did, I left it up.”

The A’s, who led 1-0 heading into the inning after Marcus Semien homered in the first, managed to cut the deficit to four in the seventh inning on a 3-run blast by Yonder Alonso.

In relief of Overton, Andrew Triggs and Daniel Coulombe pitched four scoreless innings, but Fernando Rodriguez walked in two runs in the top of the ninth and Belt singled in two more off Marc Rzepczynski to extend the Giants’ lead to 12-4.

The A’s scored twice in the ninth inning off Giants’ reliever Derek Law to alter the final score.

In his Major League debut last week, Overton beat the Angels throwing 108 pitches and allowing three runs. On Thursday, he got a rough “welcome to the big leagues” by the Giants’ bats.

“This is only my second start up at this level,” Overton said. “Everything was moving pretty fast. Usually, I can do a pretty good job of making adjustments as the game goes on, but tonight, it just didn’t really work out that way.”

Up next, the A’s will finish their brief five-game homestand when the Pirates come to the Coliseum for a three-game set starting Friday.