San Francisco Giants Notebook: Oakland A's bring more heavy artillery to the mound

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The San Francisco Giants (49-41) won't have to deal with Jeff Samardzija, but they'll still have to face the debut of Cole Hammel, another Chicago Cubs pitcher that the Oakland A's (57-33) received in their blockbuster deal.

The first two games of the Battle of the Bay series weren't exactly dominated by the A's, but they final score certainly showed it. A solid pitching duel ended as Oakland broke through in Monday night's game, and San Francisco only got one runner home plate while going 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position on Tuesday.

Bringing in runs with two outs remains a thing of the past for the Giants, and the struggles in the bullpen continue. On Monday, Ryan Vogelsong may have been tagged with three earned runs, but it was Juan Gutierrez who came in and let two runners on base immediately score after throwing one pitch. Then two runs were tagged on him (unearned).

The pitching in general wasn't good that night. The A's had 19 RISP; the Giants had two.

Madison Bumgarner had a bad third inning giving up four runs but San Francisco easily could have had some offense in the first couple innings. Instead, Sonny Gray cruised to 9-3 and had more strikeouts (8) than hits (6) given up.

It won't get any easier in AT&T Park. The A's will come in fully loaded on the mound with Hammel tonight and then Scott Kazmir on Thursday night. Both players combine with an 18-8 record on the season and a 2.76 ERA.

Bottom line: The Giants are still slumping with a 7-20 record since starting the season hot and they've run into a huge buzzsaw in a much better team. We'll see if the magic can come back at AT&T Park and if anything bounces in their favor in the final two games of this series.

Giants Notebook: Doug Fister edges Madison Bumgarner in pitcher's duel vs Nationals

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This is what a losing streak feels like. For the first time since losing the first two games in the series against Miami in mid-May, San Francisco has lost another two games in a row.

Washington took a 2-1 pitching duel last night with Doug Fister pitching a dominant seven innings, giving up eight hits but not letting any runs cross home plate. The Giants' old woes of runners in scoring position reared their ugly head with the team going 1-10; the only one finally happening by Brandon Crawford in the final inning.

The Nationals nearly had the same fate, going just 1-9 themselves in the same category. But they were able to open up the game in the fifth inning to finally break into Madison Bumgarner, who went seven innings himself and gave up as many hits, but two earned runs.

Too bad the Giants can't play the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets all the time.

Wednesday's matchup: Matt Cain (R, 1-3, 3.52) vs Tanner Roark (R, 4-4, 2.91)
Game time: 7:15 PT | TV: Comcast Bay Area, MASN 2 | Live Stream: MLB.TV

Manager Bruce Bochy believes this is a good wake-up call for the Giants who have been thriving for about four weeks. Washington currently sits tied with Atlanta at 34-29, and they could easily have the best team in the division to make the postseason and take on San Francisco at some point.

The Giants will try to even this four-game regular season series up with another game tonight followed by a day game on Thursday.