Oakland A’s Player of the Day: Dan Straily

Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Today’s Player of the Day is Dan Straily. He was very essential to the 2013 season. He filled in for Brett Anderson and that eventually earned him a rotation spot for good. Let’s take a look at how good he was and how good he will be in 2014.

2013 Pitching

In 2013, Brett Anderson had an incredibly horrible start to his 2013 season. Many fans were complaining, including myself, and were saying that we need to send him down to Triple-A and bring up Dan Straily. Management was attempting to stick it out with him, but when he got injured, it was Straily’s time to shine. Anderson would be on the DL for 60 days. That gave Straily more than enough time to solidify himself into the rotation and keep Anderson’s spot for himself. The most memorable moment he had was early on in the season when he matched Ranger’s Yu Darvish pitch for pitch and won an exciting pitchers duel with the A’s coming up 1-0.

Straily did have some bad starts too however. He started becoming inconsistent. He’d do amazing and look like an ace in one start, then he would do so bad he wouldn’t make it past the 4th inning. When Straily was good, he’d rack up strikeouts as good any other ace out there. When he was bad, it was a game for the bullpen to salvage. Overall I’d say his starts balanced each other out. The bad starts get cancelled out by his great ones.

2014 Pitching

Straily did alright in his first season in the majors. He has really great stuff and is an excellent pitcher. In his sophomore season he will experience slight growing pains, but will ultimately overcome them and actually have an outstanding season just like Jarrod Parker in the 2013 season. Expect Straily to have an ERA below .350 and to have more strikeouts than he will innings pitched. Straily will only make an incredible rotation solid from the 1st spot all the way to the 5th man. He will do great in 2014.