On paper, Billy Beane’s moves made sense, trading for elite starting pitchers Jon Lester and Jeff Samardzija.
But that was merely on paper. Instead of challenging for the World Series — as many predicted at the time — the A’s have stumbled since the trades, dropping from the top of the AL West to in danger of missing the playoffs altogether.
The A’s led the Angels by two games at the deadline, but have lost 13 1/2 games in the standings since then. Now they trail the Royals by a half-game for the first wild-card spot and entered the Thursday night with just a two two-game cushion on the Mariners for the final AL playoff ticket. Since Aug. 1, the A’s have lost 27 of 44 with a minus-8 run differential, going from 25 games over .500 to 15 over, from the best record in the sport to struggling to survive. They have lost seven one-run games in September. Scott Kazmir, who came up with some wretched Devil Rays teams, fumed after a recent defeat: “I’ve never seen anything like that at the major league level.”
“It’s going to be a turning point one way or another,” Sean Doolittle said after blowing the save in Wednesday’s 6-1 loss to the Rangers following Samardzija’s eight shutout innings. “After the season’s over, are we going to look back and point to tonight and be like, ‘This is the game where finally the wheels came off for good,’ or are we going to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and talk about how resilient we are as a team and how we were able to overcome a game like this and still get it done?”
Many have blamed Oakland’s tough times on giving up cleanup hitter Yoenis Cespedes in the Lester trade. But Brandon Moss, Derek Norris and Josh Donaldson have been power outages that preceded the Cespedes trade. Moss hadn’t gone deep since July 24 — a week before the Cespedes trade — before hitting a homer against the Mariners on Sunday and Norris has one homer since July 18.
“I don’t speak for anyone else, but I started going bad before Cespy was traded,” Moss told InsideBayArea.com. “I got away from what I was doing, taking what the pitchers were giving me, and I tried to go to my strength, trying to hit homers. It didn’t work, and it’s taken me all this time to get it right.”
Despite their struggles, the A’s are still expected to reach the postseason — FanGraphs projects a 95 percent chance — and led by Samardzija and Lester, they still could be dangerous despite an anemic offense.
“The A’s made that trade and they talked like it made them better right away. It didn’t. But assuming they get to the postseason, that’s when that trade kicks in,” one AL scout told InsideBayArea.com. “With Lester at the top of the rotation, they’re better. He’s a beast in the postseason.”