Barber: Giants' youth serves the A's a 5-1 loss

OAKLAND - The Giants were on fire Friday. Or at least it looked that way. The visitors' clubhouse was full of smoke, or steam, or something after San Francisco's 5-1 win against the A's at the Oakland Coliseum. Manager Bruce Bochy mentioned something about a fog machine.

“It's just weed, actually,” right fielder Andrew McCutchen said.

Pretty sure McCutchen was kidding. The Giants are a clean-cut crew, powered only by muesli and quinoa. And, sometimes, by young talent.

Friday night was one of those nights for the Giants. They are not a young team. Of the 11 position players who have made the most starts for them this year, only two - second baseman Joe Panik and utility infielder Alen Hanson - are under 30. And Panik is currently injured. Two of the relievers who pitched for SF on Friday, Mark Melancon and Tony Watson, are 33.

As configured in April, this team was highly experienced. Which is to say, it was pretty damn old.

But the season has not developed as planned. Things have gone wrong, like injuries to Madison Bumgarner, Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija. And things have gone right - most notably, the unexpected ascendance of young players.

Against the A's, Steven Duggar started in center field and scored the Giants' final run after singling in the eighth inning, while Ryder Jones made his first start of the season at third base and rocketed a home run off the right-field pole in the fifth. Duggar was the youngest player on the roster until the Giants called up Jones on Friday to take the spot of Brandon Belt, who is on maternity leave. Reyes Moronta, 25, faced two Oakland batters in the seventh and set them both down.

And then there was starting pitcher Dereck Rodriguez, who continues to be the Giants' most pleasant surprise of 2018. Rodriguez, in his eighth big-league start, faced 24 batters, allowed three hits, hit two guys, struck out five and departed in the seventh inning with a 3-1 lead.

“I can't say enough about what these guys have done coming up here,” Bochy said after the game. “(Alen) Hanson, (Chase) d'Arnaud, of course Rodriguez, (Andrew) Suarez, Jones comes up and gets a big home run for us. We're not where we want to be, but they've helped us stay in contention. … You need depth, and these guys have shown that we do have depth down there.”

By “down there,” Bochy meant the vast expanse of the minor leagues. It's a region that has supposedly gone barren for the Giants in recent years, under general manager Bobby Evans. But maybe it was better than we thought.

The Giants should hope so, because their veterans have not been world beaters this season.

Buster Posey is an All-Star catcher, but his numbers had fallen off in the weeks before the All-Star break.

McCutchen, a former National League MVP, has yet to find a hot streak, and third baseman Evan Longoria started slowly, then got hurt after picking up steam.

Hunter Pence is practically a nonfactor. And those veteran pitchers have had trouble staying off the disabled list.

This team desperately needs some of its greener players to perform. Right now, they're doing it, and it gives the Giants hope. Their win against the red-hot A's raised them to just four games out of the NL wild-card race. They're also four games out of first place in the NL West.

Jones' deep drive was a nice moment for a team that entered Friday ranked 25th in Major League Baseball in home runs.

“He was out there pretty much every day last year,” Bochy said. “It was a tough go for him trying to get settled in. So I thought the home run was huge for him. It was huge for us.”

But no one epitomizes the Giants' youth movement better than Rodriguez, the 26-year-old right-hander with the flowing locks. He has been a revelation since he joined the Giants in late May. With the win Friday, he is now 5-1 with an ERA of 2.72.

In his past five appearances, which included three innings of stellar relief against the Cubs on July 11, Rodriguez has yielded just four runs and 18 hits in 29? innings.

To watch him on the mound, you would guess he has been throwing at this level for years. He never looks rattled, and his mental game is way ahead of schedule.

“Being around the game, he's not in awe of everything,” Bochy said. “… He's very relaxed. Even pitching in traffic, you see it. And he does all the little things well. He holds runners. He throws four pitches, and gets all of them over. You have to consider, this guy is a converted guy. He hasn't pitched all that long.”

Posey agreed. “I had a chance to catch him in the spring, he came up and pitched an inning against the Diamondbacks,” he said. “And I thought that he didn't seem rattled out there on a big-league field, facing the Diamondbacks, pretty much their A lineup. He's kind of had that poise every time he's been out there.”

Rodriguez's father, of course, is Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, arguably the greatest catcher in baseball history. Dereck Rodriguez is an Ivan, too, though he has always gone by his middle name.

“The only person to call me ‘Ivan' is my dad,” Dereck told me after the game. “And my mom, if she's mad at me.”

Rodriguez enjoys the legacy of MLB blood, but he seems to want to carve an independent path. He said recently that he caught a bit as a kid, but wanted to distinguish himself at other positions. He was an outfielder as recently as 2013; the Twins converted him to pitcher the next year.

Rodriguez turned the A's potent lineup into pussycats on Friday.

“I trust my stuff,” he said. “I just go after them. I think it was the second inning, first pitch, right down the middle to (Khris) Davis, he put a good swing on it and hit a double. The next time up, I think he got one fastball after that. It's part of the process. I felt good out there physically and mentally. I didn't really let that second inning get to me.”

The Giants will need more of this youthful confidence over the next two-plus months.

“I think any team that makes the playoffs is gonna have to get production from guys that come up,” Posey said. “I thought really, coming into the year, that we were gonna need a couple of minor-league guys to come up and pitch well. Suarez and Rodriguez definitely have done that, and Strats (Chris Stratton) has had some good starts for us. Those guys have been a boost for us, for sure.”