OA have been a staple of the group for a few years now. They moved to Vegas. The fans are protesting, but they are probably fighting a losing battle. They will play in Sacramento, in the scorching heat, at a (really nice!) minor league stadium. The owner is the punchline. They lost 112 games last year and did nothing in the winter.
Something was brewing in the East Bay, however. Not about a surprise playoff contender – they're 47-68 on the year, and their chances of making the playoffs hit 0.0% on June 10. But still, this a lot a better team than last year's edition, and it happened mainly because of internal improvements. This version of A looks very shocking. Last year, playing them was a bye series; this year, they've almost matched their win total since '23 and it's early August. How did they do it? In one word, diversity. In so many words, well, go ahead and find out.
Accepting Churn on Offense
OA entered the year without this focused program. Their best returners were Zack Gelof, Brent Rooker, and Ryan Noda respectively. There were players at the top of the depth chart at each position, obviously — in our preseason playing time ratings, we listed nine players to get 350 or more plate appearances — but the A's leaned on the lack of certainty and allowed surprise players to continue.
Rooker, Shea Langeliers, and JJ Bleday ran with their first job, but the rest of the lineup looks very different than we expected, because manager Mark Kotsay is playing guys who have done better this year than those who came to the camp. with work. Nick Allen wasn't doing it in the short term, so the team sent him to the minors and called up Max Schuemann, who hasn't looked back since. He plays as a regular assistant in the second division or in the first division; he can play very well anywhere on the diamond and is out of place at shortstop. That's a huge improvement for a team whose shortstops produced an aggregate -0.1 WAR in 2023.
Likewise, when the A's waived Miguel Andujar in the offseason, he wasn't their first choice in left field by any means. He didn't join the big league club until late May. But he is arguably one of their best attacking options, and the more he scores, the more playing time he earns. Lawrence Butler had an incredibly slow start to the year and was demoted to the minors, but when the A's had injury problems, they gave him another shot. He rewarded that faith in spades, with a 167 wRC+ since being recalled, and in return the A's gave him everyday playing time.
Prediction systems can make us feel like we “know” who is hitting well and who isn't, but that's not how it works. It's all guesswork, probability distributions based on how similar players have performed in the past. OA didn't get too locked in on their preseason depth chart, and that helps. They knew they had a lot of options in common, and Kotsay (in conjunction with the front office, presumably) found a lot of unspoken value in letting the players speak for themselves with their play.
Miller's time
Mason Miller was an electric starter last year when he was discovered. The problem is with that competition; his body could not withstand the initial strain, in fact. Miller and the team made the tough but smart decision to focus on inning quality instead of quantity by making him the closer. To say that this decision has paid off would be an understatement for the year. Miller underwent a complete surgery, when surgeons use high-velocity baseballs as their favorite tools.
It wasn't an obvious decision, although it seems so in retrospect. Relievers are inherently more important than starters – they pitch fewer innings. Oakland needs mass coverage. But keeping Miller healthy was more important than increasing his time on the mound, and the team did just that.
I'm not saying that every team should make this trade. In fact, I think most teams shouldn't. But throw in the health issues and the fact that Miller has a reliever-y pitch mix, and the decision starts to make more sense. Yes, the A's still need more starters, but they also need relievers.
Behind Miller, the A's have done a good job of doing what idle teams should be doing right now: hunting down the waiver wire and looking for interesting relievers for roster crunches. Lucas Erceg was a Brewer until Milwaukee needed a roster spot last year; now he's a Royal after the A's traded him during his best season. Austin Adams looks like a solid contributor who could fetch something in a trade next year. (I'm surprised they didn't deal him this year.) Mitch Spence was a Rule 5 pick who was so good in the bullpen that he's starting now. Tyler Ferguson was a major league free agent last year; closes while Miller is on the injured list with a broken finger. Miller is the only A's reliever to start his professional career in the Oakland organization, but the A's have nevertheless built a nice unit that could open up exciting prospects for them in the years to come. In the meantime, these keys have made Oakland's games more attractive.
Rotation tryouts
The A's have the worst rotation in baseball this year. They have one starter with an ERA below four, one starter with a FIP below four (different guys), and no one with an xFIP, xERA, or SIERA below four. They are 25th in fWAR and 29th in RA9-WAR. Even with a big bullpen adorning the closer and a spacious home park, the team is 23rd in runs allowed per game, still a mile better than last year's 5.7 (what the heck!) but still not surprising.
While that is true, it is often part of the plan. It's really hard to get enough first base hits, and the A's actually looked at the market and decided to put it out there. They signed Alex Wood and traded for Ross Stripling with a plan to sink some innings and possibly get them something in a trade at the deadline. Wood is out for the season, but Stripling has started 13 games. Paul Blackburn also made nine of his own before being traded to the Mets.
The plan behind those guys? If you can throw more innings at a time, the A's will give you more starts. The aforementioned Spence has 14 starts already. Joey Estes, who was part of the Matt Olson trade back in 2022, looks like he could be the fifth starter on a good team, with a command-over-stuff profile that has already produced a complete-game shutout (against the Angels, fair). Hogan Harris and Osvaldo Bido got the gun. So are the ageless Joe Boyle and Aaron Brooks. Luis Medina is out due to injury but there is no doubt that he will be there as well.
JP Sears is the only A's starter to go 20 innings so far this year, and he's pitching like an innings eater himself. David Laurila recently spoke with him about how his fastball has changed over the years, and Sears leans more on the sweeper than ever before and mixes in the sinker to keep the hitter off balance. I wouldn't say the results were miraculous, but they certainly made sense; Quality innings are hard to come by, and Sears clears that bar.
Both the program and the rotation exceeded expectations. The lineup is on pace to produce 13 WAR this season, nearly doubling its 2023 mark, and the rotation is on pace for seven WAR, miles better than last year's abysmal 1.8. Sure, some setbacks were expected, but the broader baseball community thought this year's A's would be worse; Oddsmakers have given the lowest projected win rate in the majors for three full games “over” the Rockies. Instead, the A's are on track to surpass their 57.5 win streak by the end of the month. The Guardians are probably the surprisingly good team of the year, but the A's are the surprisingly talented.
This approach to building an interview team isn't for everyone, but Oakland's situation was perfect for it. The A's can afford to let people fail at the big league level; there's not a lot of pressure on the Coliseum right now, good or bad. They've spent years trading away their last crop of top players, and they've largely targeted depth in those deals, meaning their farm system has a few stars but plenty of players who can't make it to the majors. They don't have old veterans locked down their spots; they've already traded everyone who remotely fits that description.
That allows them to take advantage of the dynamic nature of baseball. As I said earlier, predictive programming is not gospel. They predict how good a player will be. None of us know a player's true talent right away, never mind a year. Sometimes all it takes is one comment from a hitting instructor, a new drill that really clicks, an offseason training session, or an epiphany in the video room; any of these can be the difference between success and failure. Saying that two prospects each project as two-time winners doesn't mean that each will be equally good two years from now; that is simply our best guess of central tendency.
I looked at specific statistics years ago when I considered the value of having two catching prospects in common: Andrew Knizner and Carson Kelly. That battle of prospects has become less important, but the concept remains. If you take two two-time winning prospects and give them a few years to develop, a reasonable estimate is that you'll produce a triple-winning player. If one of them improves, he will likely end up earning playing time. If one gets worse, they will probably lose the battle. A combination of two players – or three or four – works better in the long run, even if all players start out equal in our rating.
You can't go into the playoffs like this, because you might waste plate appearances by figuring out what your best options are. The A's also started from a low point. It's not like adding five or six wins to their team will turn them into the class of the AL West. But that doesn't make what they do less fun, or less powerful. Improving your team and giving more players a chance to succeed is admirable even if the end result is probably the same. Like I said above, following the A's isn't much fun these days. But despite all the off-field woes, the on-field product has been deceptively sweet for months now.
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