Encarnacion's late homer sinks Zito, Giants

(06-19) 04:00 PDT Toronto -- How many losses that should have been wins does a team get if it has serious playoff aspirations? Five? Ten?

The Giants already had a few before adding another galling defeat to their collection Friday night.

In a 3-2 loss to Toronto, they twice failed to bury former Cal pitcher Brandon Morrow. Manager Bruce Bochy eulogized one of those opportunities by saying, "We shot ourselves in the foot."

Barry Zito outpitched Morrow hands down in a complete game but took his third loss, the victim of big mistakes by teammates.

Zito made only one, on the first pitch of the eighth inning in a 2-2 game, and Edwin Encarnacion slammed it over the left-field fence for his ninth homer of the season and the Jays' 104th, which leads the majors.

Zito fell to 3-10 against the American League since he joined the Giants in 2007, but this one should not have been.

"The baseball gods are for you sometimes, and sometimes they're not," he said. "You've just got to keep grinding and give your team a chance to win."

Zito called the changeup that Encarnacion hit out "a good pitch. I'd throw it again."

Encarnacion had all three RBIs for Toronto. He produced the first two with a broken-bat dunker into short left field in the fifth inning, which began with an Alex Gonzalez infield single for Toronto's first hit. After Zito grazed Jose Bautista with a pitch, Pablo Sandoval momentarily fumbled a Lyle Overbay bouncer and retired nobody, leaving the bases loaded for Encarnacion.

Meanwhile, the offense made Morrow throw 33 pitches in the first inning yet scored only once on a walk to Sandoval. That was a mere trifle compared with the frustration of what could have been a big sixth inning.

Aubrey Huff led off with a drive to deep right-center field and briefly stood at the plate admiring what he thought was a home run. Instead, it ticked off the glove of a leaping Fred Lewis. Huff had a double when he might have had a triple.

Huff said he might not have risked making the inning's first out at third base anyway, "but that's still no excuse. I've got to get going there. That's unacceptable. I've got to bust it out of the box. That's my fault."

After Juan Uribe was hit by a pitch, Pat Burrell sent a line drive over Bautista's head in right. Huff read it poorly and retreated to second to tag. Only when he saw the ball fall did he start for third.

Third-base coach Tim Flannery could have cut Huff's losses by holding him. The Giants would have had the bases loaded with nobody out. Instead, Flannery sent Huff to an easy out at home.

Asked if Flannery was too aggressive, Bochy said, "You think a (ball) off the wall, he's going to score."

The Giants scored once in the inning to tie the game on a Sandoval groundout, but once clearly was not enough. Zito was left with no margin for error, and it cost him.

One consolation for the Giants: They were not beaten by their former teammate Lewis, who said before the game he was not eager to mete out vengeance. In other words, his old team was old business.

"Anything that's dead should be buried," Lewis said. "That's over and done with. I'm moving on."

He did not move on well Friday. Zito retired Lewis in all four encounters, including a strikeout and a groundball double play.

Not in the Cards: Rajai Davis gets four hits, but the A's fall to St. Louis 6-4. B5

E-mail Henry Schulman at hschulman@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle