OAKLAND -- Jarrett Parker's power has been talked about in the Giants clubhouse since last March, when he hit a grand slam over the batter's eye at Scottsdale Stadium.
Teammates couldn't believe how far that ball traveled, and Parker topped it Friday. He hit a 474-foot homer to the upper deck in dead center at the Coliseum, but afterwards it was hard for the Giants to get too excited about their young outfielder's mammoth blast.
A 5-4 loss was the third one-run loss in a row and the 14th defeat in the last 15 one-run games. The Giants were officially knocked out of the Wild Card race and they can be eliminated from the National League West as soon as Friday. Yes, there are some silver linings here as young players get a chance to show off, but that wasn't the focus late Friday night.
"You don't like losing a game like this," manager Bruce Bochy said. "The one-run games are killing us right now. We lost a couple tough ones in San Diego and came up short tonight. It's caught up with us, these one-run losses."
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The Giants can go back to each of those 14 one-run losses since July 26 and pinpoint turning points where they came up short. There was Buster Posey's fly ball to the warning track in St. Louis, Hunter Pence's double play in the ninth in Texas, a missed pitch here and a missed opportunity there. On Friday, Mac Williamson came up with the bases loaded and popped up against Sean Doolittle. That exchange took some of the punch out of Williamson's first start, and he was disappointed in a lack of execution in his first week in the big leagues. In addition to the missed chance against Doolittle, Williamson failed to drive a run in against Craig Kimbrel during a one-run loss in San Diego earlier this week. Now, those are two All-Star relievers and few would have success in those situations, but the rookie took it hard on a night when he picked up his first two career hits.
"That's what I'm here to do: I'm here to drive in runs," Williamson said.
The talented outfielder missed last season because of Tommy John surgery, and he said he appreciates every chance he gets to take the field. He had two singles and showed off a cannon of an arm, but added, "at the end of the day, it's all about winning."
The Giants appreciate that competitiveness, a trait that will mix well with Williamson's power, speed and arm. He showed off all the tools Friday against Sonny Gray.
"It felt good, felt really good," Williamson said. "Being out all of last year and trying to catch up, this year has been a roller-coaster."
Williamson will come into spring next year with an outside chance at winning a job. Parker, too, now looks like a candidate for a bench spot. Bochy loves what he's seen in the last couple of weeks, and if the new, aggressive Parker carries this over into the even year, he could be an intriguing piece as an outfielder who can play all three spots and blast a pinch-hit homer out of any park at any time. He has three homers in 13 at-bats this month and got robbed of one by A.J. Pollock and another by Triples Alley.
"He's a strong kid. I don't know how many balls have been hit up there," Bochy said after Friday's homer. "He's tall, he's kind of lanky, but he has good torque. The kid has power. This guy is going to just get better and better."
The roster is a conversation for this winter and next spring, and the Giants aren't quite ready to go there yet. Technically they're not dead in the National League West, which made this string of one-run losses that much harder to take. A bounce here or there and this could have been a different race. The same held true for Mike Leake on Friday, when the A's twice hit homers off the top of the wall in right.
"Both balls had quite a bit of backspin on them," Leake said. "It's actually kind of impressive."
Leake dropped to 1-5 with a 4.86 ERA in eight starts with the Giants.
"It's not exactly what I had in mind coming to them," he said. "It happens. It's baseball."
