Lineup on track to be A's worst since 1908
Batting average is 23 points below prior mark
After being held to just three hits over the first eight innings in Game 1 of a doubleheader against the Angels on Saturday, a double, a walk and a stunning walk-off home run from rookie Luis Barrera powered the A's to a comefrom-behind 4-3 win.
To anyone who has watched Oakland's lineup closely this season, the four-run output qualified as an outburst.
Expectations for the lineup were already low after Oakland traded corner infielders Matt Chapman and Matt Olson this spring, but through the team's first 37 games, the A's offensive production has dipped into historic territory.
With a .200 batting average, .270 on-base percentage and .579 OPS, the A's offense is on pace to be the franchise's worst since at least 1908 and is in contention to be its worst of all-time.
Baseball has changed dramatically since Connie Mack was managing the team —the A's 22 homers
this season are one more than the 1908 team hit all year — but on many days, the lineup Mark Kotsay is writing out is simply non-competitive.
Of the six A's with more than 100 plate appearances this season, two —rookie Cristian Pache and first baseman Seth Brown— have averages under .160 and onbase plus slugging percentages that are at least 35% worse than league average.
One of Oakland's biggest concerns is that despite the discouraging teamwide numbers, three regular members of the team's lineup are actually performing reasonably well relative to spring expectations. Infielder Sheldon Neuse has a .734 OPS that's 25 percent better than the average major league hitter while utility man Chad Pinder's .662 OPS is exactly league average. Catcher Sean Muprhy is capable of producing at a higher level, but his .654 OPS is only two percent worse than league average.
There's no question the A's have plenty of room to improve at the plate, but there's significant reason to doubt whether they actually will.
The A's appear committed to giving Pache an extended opportunity to develop at the big league level, and he went hitless in four games this weekend against the Angels. Pache is just 3-for-39 in May and hasn't had a multi-hit game in more than a month.
Pache entered the year as an inexperienced player in need of consistent at-bats, but on the other end of the spectrum, 14th-year major leaguer Elvis Andrus isn't faring much better. The shortstop was one of the worst qualified hitters in the majors last year and is continuing to struggle in 2022 as he's posted a .594 OPS that's 16 percent worse than the league average.
There might be hope for Brown, who hit 20 homers in 281 at-bats last year, but after striking out in more than 31% of his at-bats in 2021, that clip is almost identical this year.
It's reasonable to think Ramón Laureano will progress after missing 80 games due to a PED suspension, but it's harder to project whether veteran second baseman Tony Kemp (.212 average, .573 OPS), newcomer Kevin Smith (.188 average, .542 OPS) and utilityman Christian Bethancourt (.231 average, .619 OPS) will improve beyond what they've already shown this year.
Is help on the way? Catching prospect Shea Langeliers deserves a look after a torrid start at TripleA Las Vegas, but the A's are in no rush to promote him if he won't play everyday, which is unlikely given that Murphy is one of the team's more reliable sources of offensive production.
This isn't like 1979, when a 108-loss A's team received a jolt from 20-yearold rookie Rickey Henderson. That A's club had a .239 average and still averaged more than 3.5 runs per game. There's potential at various levels of the A's farm system, but there's no saviors who will suddenly turn the 2022 club into a formidable offensive force.
If the A's lowly lineup fails to make significant strides, the 2022 team is on pace to join the franchise record books in chapters it would rather avoid. The team batting average of .200 is 23 points worse than the previous low set by the 1908 team, the .270 on-base percentage is 11 points below the previous low of the 1908 team and the .579 OPS is only seven points better than the prior low, set yet again by the 1908 club whose best hitter was Topsy Hartsel.
Fortunately for Oakland, its 3.30 runs per game this season are far superior to the franchise-worst 2.90 runs per game, set again by a team that played more than 100 years ago in 1916. Six other A's teams since 1901 have averaged fewer runs per game, but the last time the A's scored fewer than 3.5 runs per game was 1978, when a 93-loss club averaged 3.28 runs per game.
Perhaps the only good news for the A's: there's plenty of time to prove they aren't as bad as they've played thus far.