SAN FRANCISCO -- Rich Aurilia's ninth-inning baserunning gaffe Sunday ultimately made little difference in the Giants' 2-0 Interleague loss to the Oakland A's.

But critics who claim that time has passed the Giants by can point to the incident -- Aurilia's refusal to budge from first base on what should have been a wild pitch with Barry Bonds at bat -- as a symbol of what ails the team.

"Living in the past," Aurilia called it. He was referring only to himself, but for this veteran-laden club that's often accused of lacking energy or the ability to generate offense, it was an excruciatingly apt remark.

After all, the past is much more comforting than the present for the Giants (28-34). The A's completed their first three-game sweep at AT&T Park and only the third overall in 22 Interleague series between the cross-bay rivals. San Francisco endured a second consecutive shutout defeat for the first time since June 22-23, 1996, at Atlanta and is riding a scoreless streak of 21 consecutive innings. The Giants have been blanked in three of the last five games and own a .215 batting average (37-for-172) in that span.

Giants manager Bruce Bochy called a pregame meeting to sharpen players' attitudes.

"It was to get us on the same page," one player said. "It happens two or three times every year."

Bochy indicated that the Giants need a sense of urgency to escape from their funk.

"No question it's gut-check time. We know it," he said. "Every team goes through what we're going through right now. The good teams find a way to get out of it, and that's what we have to do -- find the resolve to get back on the winning track. Everybody goes through it. We're definitely going through it a little longer than we would like."

Barry Bonds, who once kept San Francisco impervious to prolonged slumps, was the only Giant to reach third base as Lenny DiNardo, Santiago Casilla (2-0) and Alan Embree combined to surrender five hits. But Bonds also went 0-for-3 and has homered only once in his last 76 at-bats. He remained nine short of Hank Aaron's all-time record of 755.

"I'm not going to get into why he's not hitting home runs. Everybody goes a period of time without hitting a home run," Bochy said. "The bar's been set so high with Barry over the past few years. Getting back to what I talked about, this has to be done collectively as a team. We just can't sit back and wait for Barry to pop one. That's not going to work. We have to do some little things to get it done."

Yet Aurilia, by his own admission, fell inextricably into the wait-for-Barry trap after singling off Embree with one out in the ninth.

Up came Bonds, representing the potential tying run. Embree flung a 1-1 pitch to the backstop, but Aurilia headed only halfway to second base before retreating to first. It was instantly assumed that he held his ground to avoid taking the bat out of Bonds' hands -- since, with first base open, the Giants' leading home run threat almost surely would have drawn an intentional walk.

Bochy tried to defend Aurilia by saying, "He pointed to his eyes. He didn't know where the ball was." But the ever-honest Aurilia scolded himself harshly for not moving into scoring position.

"The ball got away and I stopped because I've been in that position hundreds of times in the past and a lot of times in the past with [Bonds] hitting, with the tying or winning run at the plate, I've been told to not go," Aurilia said. "I don't know if I was living in the past right there or what, but I saw the ball, I know where it was but I went back because I was thinking of things I had done in the past. But I can't change the way the game's played. I need to go right there."

Aurilia agreed with Bochy's cautioning against waiting for a Bonds homer.

"That's where I messed up," Aurilia said. "I'm a smarter player than that. I think everybody here knows that. Sometimes even when you think you're doing the right thing, you're not. That was one of those times today."

The Giants' barren offense again compromised Matt Cain (2-6), who has received two or fewer runs of support in eight of his 13 starts. Cain blanked Oakland for seven innings, stranding seven runners, until Marco Scutaro homered on an inside 2-2 fastball to christen the eighth.

"It was a pitch that we wanted and he beat us on it," Cain said. "He put a good swing on it. He caught it out in front and did his job."