Adam Dunn Goes Deep as Athletics Lose

Adam Dunn Goes Long in Athletics Loss Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

The Athletics lost again. I could submit that one sentence as my entire article and tell you everything you need to know right now. At this point in the season, stats don’t matter and game recaps don’t matter. All that matters is the answer to the question of whether your team won or lost. The Athletics lost again. The slump of August has turned into the free-fall of the “Lester Era” and Jon Lester has nothing to do with it.

Lester went out and did what he does most of the time and dominated a Seattle Mariners lineup. He threw six scoreless innings and kept the pitch count low enough to go the distance by barely breaking 100. Opposing pitcher Felix Hernandez was doing his share of dominating but he gave up a home run to Adam Dunn in the fourth and the A’s were sitting on a one run lead. Then the seventh inning came and, uncharacteristically, Lester gave up two solo shots in a row to Kyle Seager and Corey Hart. That’s all the mariners needed to win game three and take the series from the struggling Athletics.

On the bright side, the defense looked good today and, without Callaspo on the infield, really made you feel like they could win a 1-0 game. That’s all the bright side I can see, though. The A’s were only able to grab three hits, although there were some very well hit balls that found a little extra gravity towards Mariners outfielders, and left three men on base. Whether he’s taking the outing hard or truly feels like today’s loss was his fault, this is what Lester had to say via Twitter today:

In times of baseball crisis, fans like to place blame on something. Last year the blame fell 100% on a slumping Josh Reddick. He’s doing ok this year so the blame is going on the Cespedes trade, which I will not dignify with further discussion, and the platoon system. I like the platoon system for a team like the A’s. It may not work in LA or New York but it works here and I’m fine with it. I do, however, think that a hot bat should get some stabs at non-platoon situations if their platoon partner isn’t hitting all too well. During today’s game I received texts and tweets all saying that Adam Dunn should be the everyday DH.

If you haven’t read Richard Paloma’s article from yesterday about this, you should because he hits all the points I had planned on hitting in this recap. The platoon is here to stay and the A’s are not in a position to abandon a system that has served them well for two and two thirds seasons simply because the hitters are in a prolonged funk.

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I agree that, for the most part, the platoon is here to stay but I also tend to side with folks who feel like Dunn should get some extra at bats. Dunn is hitting .154 against lefties this year versus .238 versus righties. That seems like enough of a spread to warrant a platoon but he’s only had 52 at bats versus lefties this year. That’s about two weeks worth of games. Would you cut a guy from the lineup for two bad weeks? Of course not, you kept

for 45 years! So we dig deeper. Since 2010, Dunn has hit .162 versus lefties. Ok, that makes his numbers a little better but they still suck. So, deeper we dig.

Forget batting average. Let’s look at how many home runs Dunn has hit compared to his at bats. Against left handed pitchers, he hits a home run 4.44% of the time (since 2010) and against right handed hitters he hits a home run 6.22% of the time. Now the stats are starting to favor every day play. In fact, in 2012 he had a standout year with 8.1% of his homers coming from lefties versus 7.3 against righties. In case you’re wondering, Cespedes has a 4.2% home run average this year. [table id=27 /] It is impossible to approach 500 career home runs without ever hitting some off of lefties and righties and Dunn has proven that he is capable. His batting average may be bad against lefties but given more at bats that number could improve some. If I were managing this team, and nobody has ever even asked if I’d be interested (which I would), I would have Dunn be a permanent DH and put him in the 4th slot against righties and the 9th spot against lefties. I do this because it will give him fewer at bats so a low average will affect the team less but it also puts him in front of Coco Crisp which will force pitchers to throw at Dunn.

The Angels lost last night so the A’s are still sitting at 4.5 games but the time frame to make up those games is ticking away and if the A’s had won those games that they lost by one run this week, they’d only have 2.5 to go with 3 still against the Angels. I haven’t lost hope yet but today was the official start of my worry kicking in. Obviously Melvin doesn’t owe it to us to use Dunn every day but having an every day threat for the long ball mixed into the lineup may just ignite the rest of the team. To cheer you up, I leave you with this.