SCOTT OSTLER
With Astros, virus on their heels, A’s must right the ship right away
Twisting Mark Twain’s famed comment about New England weather, if you don’t like the direction your favorite majorleague team is headed, just wait a few minutes.
The current poster team for baseball’s rollercoaster season is the Oakland A’s.
Last Thursday morning, Oakland was the cream of the American League — the smoothsailin’ A’s. Then the ship hit the fan and now they are the batflailin’, roughsailin’, lifeboatbailin’, testfailin’ A’s.
Instead of worrying about what help they might pick up at the trading deadline to blast them into the Pandemic World
Series, the A’s are locked down in a Houston hotel after a positive test from a member of their traveling party.
What next? Will the A’s fly to Seattle and get back to work, or hitchhike back home to Oakland to pack their bags? The weekend was rough on the A’s.
“Tell us about it,” say the Giants, whose sevengame winning streak was derailed late last week by a protest postponement, followed by an inglorious doubleheader dump against the Dodgers, 70 and 20.
The Giants were expecting ups and downs this season. For them, any win and any streak is gravy.
The A’s, though, they’ve had World Series dreams from Day 1. And they were looking good going into Thursday’s scheduled game at the Rangers, having won two in a row to go to 2210. One of the best bullpens in MLB, best infield, solid everywhere, a roster as deep as Crater Lake.
Then the A’s games Thursday and Friday were postponed due to protests, and Saturday they dropped a doubleheader to the dreaded Astros. Sunday, one bad test.
Opportunity knocked, as loudly as some clown banging on a trash can, and the A’s were unable to answer the door.
A word about baseball’s protest postponements: fantastic. To look at these unscheduled breaks in the schedule as momentumkillers for the Giants and A’s would be pathetically smallminded. Baseball is finally growing up and realizing it is part of America. The first major sport to integrate was the last to participate in the protest movement. Better woke late than never.
Compared to the problems in America, moral and medical, a bad week for your baseball team is small potatoes. We now return to mundane baseball chatter.
Once we cut through the secrecy surrounding positive coronavirus tests, we might know whether the A’s shot themselves in the foot with a careless breach of protocols, or were merely victims of a random microscopic droplet landing in the wrong spot.
MLB made a big mistake by not bubbling down and playing all of its games in Arizona or Florida, avoiding massive amounts of risky air travel and hotelhopping.
With that added risk, baseball had to be superdiligent in its precautions. The A’s, by my casual observation, are not the most vigilant team. They notably broke protocols early in the season, mobbing Matt Olson after his gamewinning grand slam. Chalk it up to exuberance, and they’ve been better. But I still see A’s players not masking and distancing in the dugout, and not masking when sitting in small groups in the grandstands.
The A’s should be the most virusconscious team in baseball. This is their day to seize. They have the kind of roster that could put together an epic fiveyear run of excellence, but because ownership is cheap and can’t build a ballpark, this ChapmanOlsonLaureano
Semien group could be broken up too soon. This season could be the last chance to achieve their massive group potential.
Plus, this is a team built for this crazy season. In the eyes of many, they have baseball’s best bullpen — and bullpens are more vital in this shortened season. They are a home run team, and the baseball is extra juicy this season.
Matt Chapman hit a homer Saturday with an exit velocity of 115.9 mph, the hardesthit long ball by an A’s hitter in the six seasons Statcast has been clocking homers. Chapman’s crush was practically a pop fly compared to Giancarlo Stanton’s 121.3 mph homer in July. Yes, the baseballs are live. The A’s are tied for the 10thmost homers in MLB, and that’s with their main homer guy, Khris Davis, still slumping, and with Olson struggling.
This week could be the tipping point for the A’s in their quest to do something historic before their window slams shut. If they get the green light to resume play, the A’s need to shake off their recent rollercoaster dip and tighten up their protocols. Their theme song should be MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.”
It was a bad week, but the A’s need to recover and refocus because it’s 2020 and you never know, there just might be a World Series.