Scott Ostler:
Home for 17 of next 20 games, A’s can make major statement
Though they got swept in Denver, the A’s return home in fine shape.
Please form one line, folks. Don’t crowd, there’s plenty of room for everyone to leap onto the A’s bandwagon. If it gets too crowded, just throw off some of that green tarp.
The Whiz-Bang A’s (placeholder nickname until someone comes up with a better one) bring their circus back to Oakland on Monday for an eightgame homestand.
Yes, the Athletics did hit a speed bump the size of the Rocky Mountains in Denver over the weekend, losing three to Colorado. But if they can recover on this homestand, they will remain the most intriguing team in baseball. Before the Colorado detour, they were on a 27-7 run, with 17 of those wins in come-from-behind fashion.
The surge makes absolutely no sense, considering that the team’s original rotation except for Sean Manaea was wiped out by injuries, and the A’s boast one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. But they’ve been surging long enough now that people are starting to take them seriously.
The deep-analytics guys have the A’s under their microscopes as we speak, but even a baseball simpleton (thank you) can see what this team is up to. They are the poster kids for The New
Baseball.
Which is: Beef up your bullpen, especially at the back end, and pound the pelota.
The A’s have hit 144 home runs, tying them with the Red Sox for fourth in baseball. The Giants, by comparison, have hit 98.
The bad news for teams currently clinging to AL wildcard hopes is that the A’s aren’t playing out of their skulls. They don’t have two or three men hitting way out of their weight class and destined to return to earth. Stat-wise, they are more achievers than overachievers, but achievers who are nicely in sync.
Take designated hitter Khris Davis, for instance. He leads the A’s with 28 homers, close to the major-league lead, but for him, it’s business as usual. Davis hit 42 homers in 2016, 43 last year, and is on pace to hit 42. If he stays at this level for about seven more years, Davis could go into the Hall of Fame as the most anonymous power hitter in history.
The other A’s player to watch is Matt Chapman, who — like Davis — is red hot at the plate. This is Chapman’s first full season in the bigs and, by metrics and by acclaim, he is already the game’s slickest-fielding third baseman. Based on the most recent figures, he leads all major leaguers in defensive runs saved (24), and if you don’ t know what that stat means, just know that the No. 2 men (Lorenzo Cain and Alex Gordon) have 17.
Chapman’s teammates call him Chappy, which in this imagination-challenged age passes for a nickname. Suggestion: Considering the way Chapman treats opponents who dare to hit the ball his way, how about The Unwelcome Matt?
At the beginning of the season, the A’s seemed to be doomed, cursed and snakebit. They had a promising pitching staff but lost four starters to injuries.
No problem. Patch-patchpatch. They called up Frankie Montas, a knock-around pitcher in his fourth big-league organization. A converted reliever, he is 5-3 as a starter.
The key, though, has been the bullpen. At the back end, Lou Trivino (tops among all relievers with eight wins) is the setup man who passes the baton to Blake Treinen, who has 27 saves in 31 chances, and pitched a scoreless inning in the All-Star Game.
Credit is due general manager David Forst and vice president Billy Beane for patching together this team on the cheap, but that praise must be tempered by the reminder that this is the same front office that put together the previous three A’s teams, which all finished last in their division.
It would be a mistake to use the A’s as proof that payroll size has no correlation to winning. The A’s do sport a low payroll, around $70 million. But the five playoff spots in the American League are currently held by teams with payrolls at least double the size of the A’s, and in one case, triple (Red Sox).
One theory to explain the A’s success is simply that they have wandered into one of those magical seasons, when a team becomes a bonding lovefest of underappreciated and unsung guys playing hard and having a great time and taking turns hero-ing up.
If so, now is the time for the A’s to prove that. Because this team has a weakness to overcome: the Coliseum. The A’s are 35-24 on the road and 26-22 at home. Of their 144 home runs, 98 have come on the road. On this homestand the A’s take on Toronto and Detroit, two sub.500 teams, then host the Dodgers for two.
Are the A’s for real? Check back in a week. Better yet, make it the middle of next month, because the A’s play 17 of their next 20 games at home.