Splitting time:

Giants’ Panik finds himself in platoon role.

bullpen, but the more and more you see it and the more the bullpen has to work, then we wind up with a little bit of an edge.”

Oakland took three of those four games in Houston from the AL West’s top team and might have swept the series were it not for a strange game-deciding play in which catcher Jonathan Lucroy flubbed a squibber by Alex Bregman.

Not surprisingly, the A’s have seen more pitches than any team in the majors besides the Yankees and Rangers — 18,662 in 4,652 plate appearances. This is a major key for Oakland.

“You see it throughout our lineup,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Maybe doesn’t wind up in a walk, but with the deep pitch counts, the next thing you know, the starting pitcher is out of the game. There is a certain pass-the-baton kind of thing, I think it rubs off on guys.

“That’s really been a lot of the success we’ve had — even if we don’t score early, we’re wearing guys down. The numbers speak for themselves late in games, but a lot of it has to do with what we’re doing early in games.”

It’s all a setup. Great at-bats early can pay off immediately or the next time up.

“When a guy in front of you has a 10-pitch at bat, fouls off pitch after pitch, fights and grinds — the next hitter, the pitcher takes a deep breath and now he’s much more apt to make a mistake,” Bush said. “And when you’ve had a 10pitch at-bat, there’s no doubt, you’ve seen everything he has to offer. So that gives you a gauge next time you get in the box, where you want the pitch to start.

“The pitcher knows that, too. He wants to get you out, and he’s going to come into the strike zone early, and you’re going to get a better pitch to hit.”

Or a great at-bat or two can pay off much later in the game or even over the course of a series as a bullpen gets more and more tired. There’s no downside to long at-bats — except for the length of the game.

“It’s funny, one scout I was sitting with said, ‘These games with Oakland would be a lot faster if once you got to two strikes, you only get two foul balls.’ As a team, they’re grinding out at-bats, whether it’s close game or a seven-run game,” one National League scout said. “Even if they’re leading by a lot, I think they get upset if the umpire misses a borderline call.

“Once they’re in a hole, they’re looking for a mistake to handle and doing a good job with it. They’re just trying to do whatever needed to keep the at-bat alive and get a decent pitch to hit.”

On the flip side is the pitcher. Nothing makes the man on the mound more agitated than throwing his best pitch only to have it fouled off over and over. For instance, the A’s fouled off 33 of Verlander’s 110 pitches in July, hastening his exit.

“As a pitcher, it’s extremely frustrating when you’re making quality pitches and you’re thinking you’ve set a guy up for a pitch you normally get outs with and he fouls it off,” Oakland starter Brett Anderson said. “I try to be efficient and get guys to put the ball in play early, and when teams keep fouling balls off and it’s a 10-12 pitch at bat, you just want it to be over one way or the other. But when it’s your own guys, it’s fun to watch from this side of it and not having to be out there dealing with it.”

Is there an art to fouling off pitches with two strikes? Melvin said that Edgar Martinez told him he could do so; Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs are also cited as doing so. “I’ve tried it,” A’s designated hitter Khris Davis said with a laugh. “It’s hard to do.”

“I don’t think that’s the intent, to foul a ball off,” second baseman Jed Lowrie said. “When it’s close and you’re down in the count, you expand your zone a little bit, so you don’t give anything away. But if you’re just trying to foul a pitch off, you have no chance. With the stuff pitchers have today and the shifts, if you don’t put the ball in play hard, you don’t have a chance.”

The A’s, as it happens, lead the majors in solid contact, according to Statcast. That’s a nice combination with all those good at-bats.

“Teams must feel so worn down after facing us, because we make them work so hard,” starter Trevor Cahill said. “And those are a lot of really good pitches by the pitcher, too, which no one ever thinks about, everyone just says, ‘What a great at-bat!’ It’s one of those things over the course of a series, or even a season, it makes big difference.”