A’s flush with potential closers.

Veteran reliever says four potential closers ‘an extraordinary luxury’

MESA, Ariz. — The signing of former Giants’ closer Santiago Casilla could have ruffled the feathers of incumbent closer Ryan Madson.

After all, Madson had about as good a record (6-7, 3.62 ERA and 30 saves in 37 tries) for a bad A’s team as Casilla (25, 3.57 and 31 saves in 40 tries) had for a San Francisco team that made it to the postseason.

Santiago lost his job in San Francisco in September thanks to a major leagueleading nine blown saves. Madson let seven get away from him, but Oakland kept turning to him in September.

Madson doesn’t know if he will close or if manager Bob Melvin will hand Casilla the ball in the ninth inning. Melvin doesn’t know either. If it turns out to be Casilla, Madson is OK with it.

“It doesn’t matter to me what inning it is” Madson said. “I’ve seen a lot of games won or lost in the sixth and seventh innings, so those are just as important. You don’t win if you don’t get the ball to the guy who’s closing.

“Some of the biggest leverage situations are in the eighth inning, the seventh inning. And I enjoy pitching in the big leverage situations because that’s a rush. When you’ve pitched in 500 games, you want that fun rush feeling. When you get out of it, that’s the big reward, when you get out of it or you get your starter out of that last jam after he’s pitched a gem.”

Melvin has four pitchers, including John Axford and Sean Doolittle, who have saved 20 or more games in the past three seasons.

“It’s an extraordinary luxury we have with four guys who can pitch the ninth inning,” Madson said. “If you can pitch the ninth inning successfully, then you can pitch the seventh inning successfully. So we’re going into the season with a lot of firepower in our bullpen.”

Jed Lowrie is getting more rest now n than he was getting before a newborn came into the house.

That’s because the A’s second baseman had surgery to repair a deviated septum, and now he’s able to get sound sleep, even if the arrival of son Miles, now 4 months old, means the sleep comes in fragments.

Lowrie, who arrived at the A’s spring camp Saturday, says that the septum surgery and the removal of a cyst from his left foot have him feeling better than he has in years

“I’ve been sleeping better. If you look at how constricted my airway was, I’ve probably been sleep-deprived the last nine years,” said Lowrie, 32. “I was sleeping nine or 10 hours a night and still waking up feeling tired. I was trying to figure out what was going on.

“Now I’m sleeping half as many hours, but I feel better when I wake up in the morning. It’s certainly made a big difference in my training and my offseason.”

It was the cyst surgery that ended Lowrie’s 2016 season. He has been gearing up for the spring, going so far as to send the A’s video of himself running in spikes on the field just to allay concerns about his health.

The A’s have other options at second base in Joey Wendle and Adam Rosales, but the two surgeries have Lowrie in good position to defend his turf as the incumbent at second base.

When the A’s assemble en masse n Sunday for the first time in 2017, it will be time for Matt Joyce to see first-hand a team that he says has potential “through the roof.”

That may seem a stretch for a team that has finished last in the American League West in back-to-back seasons. Joyce, however, is nothing if not positive.

“This is a team that is trying to make it to the playoffs,” Joyce said. “It’s a long season, and you have to do an extraordinary amount of work to take care of yourself and keep yourself healthy, but it’s part of the work.

“I think the talent is here, and, for me, I am eager to see how the guys’ mindset is, how the guys’ attitude is. If the attitude is right, then anything is possible.”

Despite battles with the rain, A’s n pitchers got their work in Saturday by splitting up into groups, one that threw at the Lew Wolff complex and another that went back to Hohokam Stadium; all threw indoors.

With the arrivals of Lowrie and infielder n Richie Martin, all of the A’s have checked in ahead of Sunday’s first full workout except Casilla and left fielder Khris Davis. Davis should be on hand Sunday, while Casilla is close to getting his visa paperwork in order in the Do-