By Art Spander
OAKLAND — There was no magic. The Michael Kickham debut wasn’t Hall of Fame stuff, wasn’t even enough to get the San Francisco Giants a win.
These are the majors. These guys are the best. “Mistakes here,” conceded Kickham, “are magnified.”
For an individual. For a team.
The Giants are not doing very much right these days. Across the Bay from their home park, at the O.co Coliseum, against the Athletics, they’ve done everything wrong.
So the A’s made it two in a row over the Giants, one in a row over the rookie Kickham up from the minors, beating San Francisco, 6-3, Tuesday night. That follows a 4-1 win Monday.
The best team in Northern California at the moment, and maybe for a period longer than that, is Oakland. The A’s have won five in a row, 10 of their last 11.
The Giants are the defending World Series champions, but that was then, this is now, and now is a team whose strength, starting pitching, is no longer its strength. And whose weakness, offense, is magnified.
Angel Pagan, the table setter, the leadoff man, is ailing. Without him in the lineup the Giants seem flat, the middle of the order ineffective. Pablo Sandoval, with the flu or a virus, something keeping from his best, was 0-for-3, and is 2 of his last 21. Buster Posey didn’t have a hit in either game at Oakland.
“We got guys struggling at the plate,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said in a statement impossible to deny. “Our offense is not scoring runs. Give their pitchers credit.”
The A’s starting pitcher Tuesday night, when again Oakland sold out the restricted-seat Coliseum, was Jarrod Parker. He gave up a run in the first and another in the sixth. Two runs allowed in seven innings.
Giants pitching used to do that. A’s pitching is doing it now.
“It was exciting catching him and watching him,” Derek Norris said of Parker. “He’s a potential Cy Young winner.”
So Norris was a bit carried away. That is allowable. He hit a two-run homer off Kickham in the second. And he was superb at the most important job for any catcher, making sure his own pitcher is in control.
The interleague series goes west Wednesday and Thursday, if not very far, to the other side of the bridge, San Francisco, where the Giants have a winning record, as opposed to the losing one they have on the road, where they’ve dropped seven out of eight.
Tim Lincecum starts for the Giants, and as things go these days that’s hardly a sure thing. He’ll probably last longer than Kickham, whose contract was purchased from Triple-A Fresno only hours before his first pitch Tuesday. He’s the fill-in for Ryan Vogelsong. He went 2 1/3 innings. He’s not the savior.
“He showed really good stuff early,” said Bochy. Yeah, like one inning, the first, when the 24-year-old Kickham retired the A’s on eight pitches. Wow! And then whoops.
A strikeout to open the second, after which Oakland’s Jed Lowrie singled. Then a strikeout. But on a 3-1 count, Norris smashed one into the left field seats.
“It was a decent pitch,” said Kickham. “But it came on a hitter’s count.”
And the hitter hit, but if Madison Bumgarner can’t beat the A’s — although Monday he didn’t pitch badly — it’s difficult to fault Kickham for not beating the A’s.
“His stuff was impressive,” said Bochy, maybe trying to make himself feel as good about the defeat as Kickham. “He just started missing by a little bit. A couple of mistakes.”
One, insisted Bochy, after the Giants lost for the fourth time in six games, was not the decision to elevate Kickham to the big-league team. Kickham can get wild on occasion, but some of his fastballs reached 94 mph. Still, out of 65 pitches in fewer than three full innings, he had only 36 strikes.
“It was awesome just to get the opportunity to put on a Giants jersey,” said Kickham, who has been in pro ball only since 2010. “It’s a great opportunity. (The game) didn’t go how I wanted, obviously, but it was something to learn from.”
Before the game, Bochy described what he liked about Kickham, his repertoire, his manner.
“It’s a big day for him, as it is for anyone his first big-league game,” said Bochy. “He probably could use another year at Triple-A, but he’s here. We’ll know more about him after the game.”
They do. So do the Oakland A’s.