A’s big bats sluggish going into weekend
OAKLAND >> The A’s big bats have been quieter than usual recently, but manager Bob Melvin isn’t concerned. He canceled batting practice before Friday night’s game against the Texas Rangers, noting the team appeared “sluggish” in an 11-3 loss the night before.
Asked about Matt Chapman, who has been off his game since returning from an ankle injury, Melvin said he’s the last player he worries about.
Chapman doesn’t worry much these days, either, even if numbers from the past few weeks might prompt alarm in others.
Over a span of 12 games before tweaking his ankle July 17 against Seattle, Chapman was batting .386 with three home runs, 15 RBIs and just five strikeouts in 44 at-bats. The A’s went 10-2 in those games.
In six starts before Friday, he was hitting just .182 with no home runs or RBIs and nine strikeouts in 22 at-bats. Oakland went 2-4 in those outings.
Chapman tries hard not to feel the weight of a bad stretch in a sport where even a .300 hitter fails on seven of 10 at
bats.
“I used to live and die with that,” Chapman said. “Probably last year I would have been pulling my hair out after a week like that and just be a mess.”
Not anymore. Now in his third season, Chapman is beginning to learn the rhythm of a 162-game schedule. Overall, he is batting .273 with a team-best 22 homers this year.
“It just comes from experience,” said Chapman, 26. “I know that if I get back in that rhythm, things will pick back up where they were. You’ve just got to keep perspective I know there’s going to be good weeks, bad weeks, good months, bad months.
“I couldn’t hit .500 forever.”
Chapman credits some of his recent struggles to the pitchers the A’s saw in road games against division leaders Minnesota and Houston.
Mostly, he’s taking the long view.
“This time last year I felt like I was playing bad. And then I caught fire at the end of the season,” he said of the 2018 campaign, when he batted .278 with 24 homers and 68 RBIs while also earning a Gold Glove for his play at third base.
“When you go back and look at the season as a whole, it kind of makes those (bad) feelings go away. I just have to stay the course.”
• Chapman wasn’t the only member of the heart of the A’s lineup who has scuffled a bit offensively.
Khris Davis batted just .161 with no home runs over the previous eight games while Matt Olson was at .267 with one home run over the same span. Add ’em up and the A’s three big guns batted a combined .213 with one home run, 10 RBIs and 32 strikeouts over those eight games.
• Brett Anderson, whose wife gave birth to their first child Monday, said he plans to use an off day next Friday to return home to Phoenix for a visit. In the meantime, he hopes to get better rest after giving up five runs in the fifth inning Thursday against the Rangers.
Anderson wasn’t happy with his performance, but he showed a new perspective on life afterward.
“Under different circumstances, I’d be a little more upset, but I can’t be too upset because I just had a kid who is healthy and a wife who is healthy,” he said.
“Obviously, you’d like to win a ballgame and pitch better and give your team a chance, but at the end of the day, things change once you have a kid. Thirty-one years of living, breathing, dying baseball kind of goes out the window now, with a newborn.”
• Outfielder Stephen Piscotty, who has missed the past month with a sprained right knee, will travel to El Paso, Texas, today to join the A’s Triple-A Las Vegas team for a rehab assignment.
Melvin said Piscotty will DH in his first game, then go about seven innings in the outfield the next time out. His timetable to return to Oakland is still uncertain.
• Right-hander Homer Bailey will make his third start for the A’s today, and Melvin said he hopes it will be closer to the performance Bailey gave in his team debut than his second outing.
Bailey allowed just two runs in six innings and was winning pitcher in a 10-2 victory over Seattle on July 17. Then he was rocked for nine runs and three homers in just two innings in an 11-1 loss at Houston on Monday.