Cotton hits speed bump in A’s rotation battle
MESA, Ariz. – The A’s have always believed Jharel Cotton has the stuff to be a top of the line starter, it’s just a matter of consistency. It was an issue all last season. It’s an issue this spring.
After shining in his spring debut against the Padres last week, tossing a pair of hitless innings with five strikeouts, Cotton was roughed up in a 9-4 loss to the Rangers Thursday for four runs on five hits and two walks in two innings of work.
“That’s the consistency we’ve been talking about,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “You want him to follow up a good outing with another one and take the confidence that he had from the time before. He just couldn’t do it today.”
When Cotton is at his best, he’s usually getting ahead in the count, which allows him to build confidence and make things difficult for hitters with his exceptional changeup. That didn’t happen against the Rangers.
Cotton constantly found himself falling behind in the count, with a fastball he said he did not have a good feel for throughout the outing.
Despite the subpar outing, Cotton was pleased with the way he was able to throw his changeup for strikes, a pitch he often shied away from even throwing last season when things got out of hand early in a game.
“The positive was my changeup. I threw it a lot for strikes and I’m proud of that,” Cotton said. “The fastball will come the more I throw it, but I just want my changeup there start to start. I had a positive with that today.”
Melvin was glad to see Khris Davis hit a grand slam, his second consecutive game with a home run, but Cotton’s poor start set the tone for what was really the first bad game the A’s have played this spring.
Entering the day with only two errors through their first six games, the A’s committed four errors on the day, including three in one inning. The A’s led MLB in errors last year with 121.
“It’s something we’re working hard on trying to cut down on and certainly it doesn’t sit well. The game in general was not a good game for us,” Melvin said. “Thank God KD hit a grand slam or else it could have been really ugly.”
INDIANAPOLIS – For John Lynch, this year’s NFL combine brings a different kind of liberation.
In 2017, his first combine as 49ers general manager, he called not having a quarterback “liberating.”
“I’m always an optimist and I was trying to be one there,” Lynch said Thursday. “The idea was we could shape it the way we wanted to.”
The 49ers have certainly shaped the quarterback position to their desire, delivering Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan a new sense of liberation with Jimmy Garoppolo locked in long term. A handful of teams in Indianapolis this week don’t know who their quarterback will be in 2018, hoping to find the one in a quarterback-heavy draft class, free agency or via trade. In San Francisco’s camp, now it’s about building around that centerpiece instead of hoping to find it.
“It didn’t happen in the draft process last year, but some fortuitous things kind of broke our way during the season and I really commend Kyle for his patience once we got Jimmy and allowing him to take time and learn the system as best he could,” Lynch said. “Everybody was saying, ‘Play him. You traded for him. Let’s play him.’ He made sure that he was at a spot where we were setting him up for success and then he went in and, as we like to say, he balled out.
INDIANAPOLIS – Kyle Shanahan got his chance to address Reuben Foster’s ongoing legal matter while sitting down with local media at the 2018 NFL Combine Thursday.
This was the first time the 49ers head coach has addressed the 2017 first-round pick’s offseason arrests, including an incident Feb. 11 in which the linebacker was accused of domestic violence, making threats and possession of an assault weapon. Shanahan and general manager John Lynch met with Foster shortly after the incident.
“Just talking to him about how these things happen, why you get in these situations and just the responsibility that everything has,” Shanahan said of the crux of the discussion. “You guys know I can’t get into any of it. Reuben was great for us when he was around and things have happened since he’s been gone and those are things we have to address, things we need to make sure that he learns how to do the right way.”
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office has not announced whether it will file charges against Foster, and it has until March 13 to decide on those offenses, which can be classified as misdemeanors or felonies.