Playoffs nothing new for A’s players who got used to winning in minors
Chad Pinder was reminiscing about his minor-league career when asked about the Texas League MVP he won in 2015. His first thought was of teammate Matt Olson.
“I can’t count how many times he saved me at first base,” said Pinder, who played shortstop that year.
Pinder and Olson played for the Double-A Midland Rock-Hounds during an extended run of glory in the A’s minorleague system. The postseason was so much an annual event that it was assumed.
The winning culture enjoyed by the A’s, who will be at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday for their first playoff game in four years, is nothing new for their homegrown players who won at the lower levels, particularly Pinder and Olson.
“At every level,” Pinder said, “it seemed once we got accli-
mated and we got comfortable, we put something big together. It was always the second half that we turned it on. In a sense, that has happened this year.”
The A’s sprinted to the finish line, posting a majorsbest 62-29 record since mid-June to earn the American League’s second wild-card spot and overcome the long odds of a team that entered this season with the game’s lowest payroll after finishing last a third straight year.
Olson is still saving teammates at first base with his Gold Glove-caliber scoops, stretches and leaps, and Pinder is still a valuable asset as a utilityman, starting at six positions this season.
Not a lot has changed, except they’re no longer winning in the minors. They’re winning in The Show.
“I think we learned to have a winning atmosphere and not take losses too hard and have the confidence in ourselves,” Olson said. “It’s something we kind of had coming up, and it’s carried over to up here.”
Olson and Pinder were teammates in three straight stellar seasons. Sandwiched around the 2015 Midland team that finished 83-57 and won the league title, Class A Stockton posted the California’s League’s best record in 2014 (85-55), and ditto for Triple-A Nashville in the Pacific Coast League in 2016 (83-59).
It wasn’t just Olson and Pinder. Other top-level prospects on those teams (but no longer on Oakland’s roster) included Ryon Healy, who was dealt to Seattle for Emilio Pagan; Renato Nuñez and Jaycob Brugman, who are now in the Orioles’ organization; and Bruce Maxwell, who was on Oakland’s Opening Day roster but spent most of the season with Nashville.
Many others appeared on one or two of those teams, including A’s reliever Ryan Dull, who emerged from the same 2012 draft as Olson. They first were teammates in the Arizona rookie league, and that club had the league’s best record, too.
“We were in the playoffs every year coming up through the minors,” Dull said. “We didn’t know what a season of not going to the playoffs felt like. Playoffs pushed the season to the middle of September, so this is nothing new, and winning (in the minors) gives you the mentality to continue to have the same success up here.”
Third baseman Matt Chapman, drafted in 2014, usually was one stop behind the others, except for one memorable stretch late in his first pro season. He was called up from low-A Beloit all the way to Midland for the Rock Hounds’ postseason because they needed a third baseman.
All Chapman did was hit .310 with two homers in eight games, helping Midland to the Texas League title, the first of four straight for the Rock-Hounds.
A’s bench coach Ryan Christenson managed two of those championship teams and guided two other A’s farm teams into the playoffs.
“They learned how to win,” said Christenson, who joined Bob Melvin’s staff this year. “I’ve heard numerous players talk about our unbelievable clubhouse vibe, and that’s what we had at every level.”