A’s dream season ends in New York
Another tactic tried, but still no playoff success
NEW YORK — Here we are again. All dressed up for an extended run of October baseball and nowhere to go but home.
The A’s constantly rewrite the way they do things, from building rosters to drafting game plans to orchestrating playoff marches.
They are trendsetters, no doubt. Nothing has worked in the postseason, however, at least this century.
The 21st century A’s are 1-14 in postseason games in which a win would have advanced
them in the playoffs, and Wednesday’s 7-2 loss at Yankee Stadium was the latest kick in the gut.
This time, the A’s tried something new, something no team in postseason history had tried, and that’s the strategy of bullpenning their way through nine innings.
On baseball’s biggest stage against baseball’s most storied team, it didn’t work. Opener Liam Hendriks, whose job was to pitch the first inning, gave up a two-run home run to his second batter, Aaron Judge, and the A’s did not recover.
“They knew everything was kind of up for grabs tonight depending on what the situation of the game was,” manager Bob Melvin said of his conga line of relievers.
Whether it was right or wrong, innovative or simply desperate (or a little of both), it was a decision the front office made and must live with. An otherwise glorious and unexpected season came crashing down in a roaring stadium in which the A’s didn’t use a traditional starter.
A strategy stemming from a beaten-down rotation and deep bullpen was implemented in early September a few days after general manager David Forst hinted it was coming. With input from the club’s analytic department and authorization from Billy Beane, the executive vice president of baseball operations, the A’s took a big gamble and lost at the worst possible time.
Melvin was skeptical with the strategy at first, as were most of the players, but they seemed to come around through September as it became clear the front office was sticking with the plan of using the best pitchers on the staff in expanded roles.
Had the A’s beaten the Yankees, we would have seen traditional starters Mike Fiers and Edwin Jackson in the Division Series against Boston — the A’s were 22-4 in their starts — but on Wednesday, Jackson was on the roster only to pitch extra innings, and Fiers didn’t make the cut.
Fiers was used in relief in his final regular-season outing to see if he could handle the role following the opener. He couldn’t. That he’s a flyball pitcher who doesn’t have a good track record at Yankee Stadium, much like Jackson, was a reason he was off the roster.
“It’s tough to sit there and watch. Everyone wants to play and contribute,” Fiers said in a silent clubhouse corner. “I’m not mad that I didn’t get in. I’m not mad things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to.
“Baseball’s a tough game, and you can’t plan anything out. We went with our best guys, and they beat us.”
Actually, the A’s did try to plan everything out. The pitchers were informed of their possible roles beforehand, some of which were foreign.
Rookie setup man Lou Trivino had not pitched the second inning in a big-league game, but there he was Wednesday, replacing Hendriks with a two-run deficit in the second. Trivino’s first two batters reached base, but he rallied to pitch three scoreless innings.
All-Star closer Blake Treinen wasn’t so fortunate. He appeared in the sixth inning for the first time this year and wasn’t his unhittable self. He spelled Fernando Rodney with a runner at third and no outs, and the Yankees put away the game with a four-run inning.
Were Treinen’s struggles attributed to the different role?
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “We’ve talked about it. We all went over our possible scenarios and were told to be ready at certain times. Things happen, and things escalated for us. I had to get going (to be ready to pitch), so I didn’t think it affected anything.”
Trivino added, “I was ready for everything, if it was the first inning of the ninth. I was excited to throw.”
If the possibility existed that Treinen and Trivino would pitch in different roles in a postseason game, why didn’t the A’s put them in those rules in September when they bullpenned in nine games?
I asked Melvin after the game.
“We did with Lou,” said Melvin, speaking of Friday’s game in Anaheim in which Trivino was the opener and pitched the first inning. “We were trying to get him acclimated to maybe an earlier inning.
“As far as Treinen, we’ve just got to get our best in there at that time . ... That point in time in the game, we’re trying to cut it off.”
In retrospect, it would have been wise to have Treinen instead of Rodney start the sixth. The A’s were down 2-0 at the time, still in the game despite a usually reliable offense that failed to get a hit until Jonathan Lucroy’s fifth-inning single.
The difference on this night was Luis Severino. The Yankees had him, the A’s didn’t. So the A’s opened with Hendriks, who had pitched eight scoreless first innings in September only to scuffle when the stakes were highest.
“Most of the other outings weren’t bullpenning per se,” Hendriks said. “It was me, then a starter, a bridge guy coming in. Today’s was straight up a bullpen game. Some pitchers did well, some like myself didn’t.”
From early September, the A’s went 4-6 in bullpen games. They had thought it was a necessary experiment. They had hoped for a better ending.