A’S BUST, BOOM THEIR WAY INTO FIRST
Bob Melvin shook his head and let out a raspy sigh behind the microphone at his Zoom news conference Wednesday. Through the screen, it seemed that Melvin, manager of the Oakland Athletics, was having an emotional reaction to his team’s 11th consecutive victory.
“It’s not emotional,” Melvin said, smiling. “I don’t have any voice left.”
Even by the standards of baseball’s most all-or-nothing franchise, April has been a month to shout about. The A’s lost their first six games of the season for the first time in more than a century. They won a game, lost a game and haven’t lost since.
“We didn’t just lose the first six games; we got boatraced pretty much every night,” General Manager David Forst said Thursday. “There’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to it, but it was potentially demoralizing.”
The A’s lost those first six games by a collective score of 50-13, and the streak roused a musty stench from their ancient burial ground. The last time the A’s had started 0-6, in 1916, they were based in Philadelphia and went on to finish 36-117, the worst record in American League history.
It is fitting for the A’s to hold that mark. The shorthand story of their franchise goes like this: five titles in Philadelphia — still more championships than the Phillies, Eagles, 76ers or Flyers — but also 18 last-place finishes; a move to Kansas City for 13 losing seasons; then a move to Oakland, where they have reached the World Series six times, both in three-year bursts.
More recently, the A’s have wrapped six playoff appearances around three last-place seasons. In 2021, they have bombed and boomed, all in three weeks.
“Luckily, we have a lot of history of not really coming to any conclusions in the
first couple months of the season, let alone the first couple of weeks,” Forst said, before referring to Billy Beane, the team’s executive president of baseball operations.
“Billy’s on record, back to the ‘Moneyball’ days, as saying the first two months are evaluating what you have, and then you have a couple of months to make changes before the last two months, when you kind of sit back and watch. That said, we’ve never had anything quite as extreme as these two weeks.”
The A’s, who led the AL in homers and steals through Wednesday, start a sevengame road trip in Baltimore today. They left Oakland on a high: After shutting out the Twins in both games of a doubleheader Tuesday, they survived a 13-12 thriller Wednesday by scoring the tying and go-ahead runs with two outs in the 10th inning on a throwing error by Minnesota third baseman Luis Arraez.
It was the first time since 2009 that the A’s had won while allowing 12 runs in a
game. But to hear the players tell it, the outcome was never in doubt.
“It just smells like you’re going to win,” center fielder Ramon Laureano said. Go on.
“A win smells like — just like the Bay Area wind, you know? Like we’re just going to win,” he said. “You just smell it. We joke around all the time. After we had an hour half-inning, we joke around, and we’re like, ‘Yeah, we’re pretty loose still.’ ”
Notable
Dodgers slugger Cody Bellinger is still uncertain when he will return from a hairline fracture in his left leg.
Bellinger said Thursday that he feels “great,” but the 2019 NL MVP must wait to return to the lineup.
“I can’t really do much until the bone heals, which depends on each person,” Bellinger said.
The Dodgers’ medical team initially saw only bruising and swelling in Bellinger’s calf when he was injured April 5, but the fracture
was found by a CT scan after he reported pain in his leg.
• Pirates 3B Ke’Bryan Hayes aggravated his left wrist injury during a batting drill late Wednesday night and was sent back to Pittsburgh for further evaluation. With Hayes’ absence extended, Pittsburgh selected the contract of Todd Frazier and designated OF Dustin Fowler for assignment. The Pirates put RHP Chad Kuhl on the 10-day IL retroactive to Monday with right shoulder discomfort and recalled RHP Geoff Hartlieb.
• Blue Jays OF George Springer will play in an intrasquad game today, the next step on his return from two strained leg muscles that have delayed his Toronto debut. He could return in this weekend’s road series against the Rays.
• Yankees 3B Gio Urshela was not in the lineup after his back tightened up during Wednesday’s loss.