Forbes Business SportsMoney The Oakland A’s Pitching Staff Is No Longer The Worst In Baseball
Key Highlights :
The Oakland Athletics have endured a difficult season, with a team ERA of 7.86 that was on track to be the worst in Major League Baseball history. However, thanks to some improved second-half performances, the A’s have managed to move out of the bottom spot in team ERA, overtaken by the Colorado Rockies’ 5.66 mark.
41 players have pitched for the A’s this year, with only three of them being position players pitching in blowouts. Of the remaining 38, 24 have at least one start, and only four have pitched more than 80 innings on the season. The lack of continuity is understandable, given the struggles the team has faced, but there may now be some reason for hope.
27-year-old J.P. Sears has emerged as the de facto ace, with a 1.26 WHIP and .249 batting average against over 168.1 IP. Luis Medina and Ken Waldichuk have also improved throughout the course of the season, with Waldichuk in particular seemingly overcoming a walks problem that had made him one of the worst offenders in the first half of the season.
The A’s have also received some veteran contributions, with Paul Blackburn having an ERA of 4.43 in his 20 starts, and Trevor May providing some back-end surety with improved performances in the closer role.
The A’s fire sale last season, which saw Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino traded to the New York Yankees, has yielded the outline of a decent pitching unit for both now and for the future. This, combined with the team’s cost-cutting measures, has meant that what could have been a historically bad season in the history of the league will instead merely be the historically worst season in the last 117 years of the franchise.
In the grand scheme of things, it will still be a 110+ loss season, but the Oakland A’s have at least found some decent pitching among the embers. It is a modest achievement, but it is an achievement nonetheless, and provides a small uptick in fortunes for an Oakland franchise that, on and off the field, has been going nowhere.
