SAN DIEGO -- Barry Zito's recent excellence enabled the Giants to dismiss his ineffectiveness Saturday night as an aberration.
But Zito's slightly more distant past prompts the lingering, nagging thought that his performance in San Francisco's 11-3 loss to the San Diego Padres marked the resumption of a familiar pattern -- the one that has saddled him with a 43-59 record as a Giant.
The Zito who survived only 3 2/3 innings and allowed eight runs, his most since he surrendered nine last Aug. 28 against Arizona, wasn't the Zito who won each of his last three starts since returning from a foot injury.
The Zito who struggled at PETCO Park surrendered a three-run, first-inning homer to Jesus Guzman, matching the number of runs the left-hander allowed in his three-game stretch of dominance.
The Zito who presided over the end of the Giants' four-game winning streak permitted two home runs and issued four walks, which also equaled his yield in those categories from his previous three games.
Manager Bruce Bochy calmly excused Zito's performance. Asked if he considered it an exception rather than the rule, Bochy said, "Yeah, that's how I'm looking at it. Hopefully that's how he looks at it, and all of us. He's been doing such a great job."
Zito (3-2) also coped with his lapse by viewing this as an isolated event.
"It's back to day-to-day tomorrow," he said.
Zito demonstrated immediately that this day wouldn't belong to him. When pitching coach Dave Righetti visited him at the mound two pitches before Guzman deposited a cut fastball into the first row of the left-field seats, Zito had thrown only four strikes in 18 pitches while walking two Padres.
Citing that ratio, Bochy said, "You know that it's not his night. But you're hoping he figures a way to get things done. It didn't quite happen."
Zito summarized his problems with one word: execution.
"When you execute pitches, guys miss the barrel [of the bat]," he said. "You fall behind [on the count] by not executing and things get a little more difficult out there. It was difficult to get the ball down tonight. For the most part, the curveball didn't have the finish down. The changeup, either."
This was apparent to the Padres, who snapped a seven-game losing streak.
"Early, he was having a little command issue and we took advantage of his mistakes, which you've got to do against the good ones," center fielder Cameron Maybin said.
Guzman's homer snapped San Diego's skid of 70 innings in a row without scoring multiple runs. But the Padres weren't finished. With one out in the third inning, San Diego's Jason Bartlett hit a routine grounder to Aubrey Huff but beat the first baseman's flip to Zito, who covered the bag.
Bochy hinted that Zito could have handled the play more efficiently.
"It looked like [Zito] got a good break, but the hitter got out of the box well and beat him to the bag," Bochy said. "It was close, I know. But it looked like Z might have slowed up the last four or five steps, thinking that he had him.
Zito then walked Chris Denorfia and yielded Guzman's two-out RBI single before Orlando Hudson homered, widening San Diego's lead to 7-1. Hudson's long ball also ended the Padres' stretch of 56 consecutive games without homering more than once, seven short of the club record. It was the longest such stretch in the Major Leagues since the 1983 Cleveland Indians went 63 games without multiple homers.
Guzman, who briefly played for the Giants in 2009, left the premises before reporters could speak to him. So it wasn't immediately known whether he derived extra satisfaction from driving in a career-high four runs against a former employer.
Giants center fielder Andres Torres wasn't surprised to see such a hitting display from his '09 Spring Training roommate, whose career Minor League batting average exceeds .300.
"He's always been a good hitter," Torres said. "You see his numbers. No doubt he can hit. He's got the chance. Now he's taking advantage of it and working hard."
Pablo Sandoval tripled and scored in the fourth inning and Miguel Tejada homered in the sixth to account for the Giants' scoring off San Diego starter Cory Luebke (3-3). Mike Fontenot added an RBI double off Luke Gregerson in the ninth.
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