This previous Saturday afternoon, I found my way to Yankees Stadium to watch a game there before its impending demolition. The Bronx Bombers opponents were the Oakland Athletics, a team that perhaps is the most underrated in baseball this season. Every time I open up a newspaper to look at a box score or browse online at the MLB standings, I am always amazed at how well the A’s are playing. The current line of the Oakland club reads 52-48 and 5.5 games out of the wild card despite going 3-7 in their last ten games. Even more surprising is that the A’s are actually under-performing posting a +60 run differential, a mark good for third in the in American League. This stellar work leads to a series of questions, How are they doing it, and is it possible for this year’s A’s to make a run in the pennant race?
Attempting to answer the first question posed obviously begins with the pitching, but runs have to come from somewhere. The starting roster includes the names of Suzuki (Not Ichiro but Kurt), Wes Bankston, Mark Ellis, Jack Hannahan, Bobby Crosby, Emil Brown, Carlos Gonzalez, Ryan Sweeney, and Jack Cust. Any non A’s fan gets brownie points for knowing over half of the starting lineup. The best hitter on the team is arguably Cust, who leads the team in most of the offensive categories including Home Runs, RBI, OBP, and Slugging percentage. Cust is a true moneyball kind of player; this season he is batting .228 with 123 strikeouts but he also has drawn 73 walks placing his on base percentage at a high .375 clip. None of the starting position players is batting above .285 but also only one has an OBP of lower than .300. The good news for the team is that Frank Thomas is scheduled to return from a quad injury on Friday, who has in limited action this season batted .319 with an OPS of .933. Thomas’ return will allow Cust to move to left field relieving Emil Brown, the A’s fourth outfielder, from starting. Those team numbers, while below average are good enough considering the fantastic depth of the A’s pitching staff.
The Athletics pitching staff leads the American league in traditional statistics ERA and Batting Average Against as well as advanced metrics like WHIP, Opponents OPS, and DIPS. These numbers may be inflated considering that the presumed ace of the staff Rich Harden along with reliever Chad Gaudin were traded to the Chicago Cubs in return for starting pitcher Sean Gallagher, outfielder Matt Murton, two prospects, a deep dish pizza and a case of Olde Style beer. More recently Joe Blanton a starter who never lived up to potential after being selected in the first round of the 2002 draft was traded to Philadelphia for a prize of three of the Phillies top minor leaguers. Blanton appears to be the exception to the rule when it comes to producing quality pitchers in the A’s system. Often it seems that General Manager Billy Beane and his crew have an assembly line for manufacturing major league caliber arms. Previous prospects include Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, Rich Harden, and Dan Haren. All of the aforementioned have moved on to bigger and better contracts with other teams. The more impressive fact is that this year, the Beane Pitching Machine has produced the A’s top three starters, Justin Duchscherer, Greg Smith and Dana Eveland. Each of which have ERAs below 3.80 and Duchscherer leads the league with a 1.87 mark. The breakout years of these three lessen the blow of the loss of Harden and allow the front office to dump salary and compete at the same time. The rotation is rounded out by the newly acquired Gallagher and prospect Dallas Braden, both of whom have performed admirably since moving to the rotation. Gallagher has made two starts allowing four earned runs in twelve innings while Braden made his first start yesterday going five and giving up one run enroute to a win. However, this is only one side of the pitching coin. Similarly, the bullpen has been spectacular.
The Mop up crew is led by Closer Huston Street (who blew a save in the game on Saturday) who is thought to be subject of many trade rumors has been pretty much himself despite a deceptively high ERA of over 4.00. He has a K/BB ratio of near 4:1 as well as a WHIP of 1.14. Surprsingly though for a team that does not produce many runs, Street and the A’s have a relatively low number of saves, 19. The Bullpen can boast an ERA of 3.24 which ranks second on the junior circuit as well as a stout 1.24 WHIP. Standouts in this bunch include Santiago Casilla who would likely take over as closer if (I mean when) Street is traded with seven holds, 3.07 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, and nearly 4:1 K/BB in over 29 innings pitched. Other hurlers worth a mention are Andrew Brown with a 2.10 ERA and Brad Zeigler who is posting a Joba Chamberlain like no earned runs in 23 and 2/3 inninngs. This group has been called upon for more work than average due to the relative youth of the starting pitching, but has been able to answer the call effectively keeping the near lifeless offense in the game.
This seems to be the recipe of success for the Athletics. It begins with a heavy dose of solid starting pitching, hoping to get six innings out of them. Then add a generous addition of hearty relief work, perhaps up to four innings worth. Finally, sprinle enough offense to manufacture hopefully four runs. Last Saturday’s game is evidence of this concoction’s virtue. Starter Gallagher kept the Yankees lineup more or less dormant, only allowing two runs in five innings. The stellar string of relievers then went on to pitch three innings of shutout ball allowing the A’s to take a 3-2 lead in the top of the ninth, only to have Street blow the save after having nobody on with two outs, eventually leading to a loss in the twelth. Despite going in the “L” column, the A’s were one out away from winning a game with their fourth starter going against a superb lineup as well as watching one of the best pitchers in the game, Joba Chamberlain, mow down the A’s gasahol run engine they call a lineup. Saturday’s game was a game that should have been a loss to a club with superior talent but remarkably was almost a win. So for me, the game was much like the highly touted college basketball game this year between #1 Memphis and #2 Tennessee. Though Tennessee won the game, it seemed as if the loser was more impressive in defeat. The cards held a loss in the national championship game for the Tigers, but what will become of the A’s.
I along with other so called analysts will be the first to tell you that I do not think this season for the A’s will resemble any of the underdog magic of the Marlins 2003 world series run, but I felt obligated to broadcast the teams’ remarkable success despite near complete lack of press coverage. The next week should be a harbinger of how the A’s season will end. Future hall of fame slugger Frank Thomas will make his way back into the lineup and there is good reason to think that Beane will continue to dump salary by trading closer Huston Street. If Thomas’s return can provide a significant spike in the offensive production, to go along with a superb pitching staff, with or without Harden and Street, could be enough to squeak a division title over an overachieving Angels squad or perhaps a wild card berth. If the run differential holds, using Bill James’ Pyhtagorean expectation of games won, The A’s would finish 92-60 and the Angels post a record of 87-65, a full five games behind the A’s. If Oakland can progress while Los Angeles regresses toward the mean, the AL West race may lead to one of the least predictable conclusions in modern years.
-KJ Grande
Sources: MLB Standings, A’s Hitting Stats, A’s Pitching Stats, MLB Team Pitching Stats, Harden Trade Report, Blanton Trade Report, http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=280719110
