The “Fierce” Competition of the Oakland Athletics
The Mariners suffered an extra-inning loss the the New York Yankees last night. Similar to what the Athletics have experienced all season, their young starter Mike Montgomery pitched well for 6 innings but the bullpen surrendered a run in the ninth and then three runs in the 11th inning. Their comeback fell short and they lost 5-3.
Yes, this post is about the A’s. First I want to share something I saw on Twitter this morning about the “fierce” competition of the Oakland Athletics.
#Mariners' 8.5-game deficit to Houston is largest of season. Here's something: Royals were 24-28 last yr, same as M's. Won 15 of next 19.
— Larry Stone (@StoneLarry) June 3, 2015
The Oakland Athletics have heard that story before.
The 2005 A’s were 21-33 on June 3rd, back to .500 by the first week of July, and finished 88-74.
The 2012 A’s were 23-31 on June 3rd, back to .500 by the first week of July, and finished 94-68.
See where I’m going with this?
The A’s are 7-3 in their last ten games, have climbed back to only being 12 games under .500, they have outscored their opponents this season (227-224), and now Billy Beane finally has the team he envisioned at the outset of 2015. They are still in this.
Sean Doolittle is still out, but Eric O’Flaherty is back from the disabled list and so is Drew Pomeranz. Ben Zobrist hit a grand slam to finally get some well deserved runs in yesterday’s win over Detroit. Kendall Graveman has two quality starts in his last three outings, allowing just six earned runs in 17.2 innings.
The only key piece that is not contributing like he was expected to is Billy Butler. It is finally June, which is good news for Butler. June is when he is at his best, if you believe in that sort of thing. So I’m anticipating better results from him going forward.
Billy Burns has become the catalyst this team has missed for the past 12 months, Sonny Gray is one of the game’s best starters, and Evan Scribner has emerged as a top-notch reliever. This is a good team and has played like it all season, it’s just that were are finally starting to see results.
Before you start to draw comparisons to the 2007-2011 A’s teams keep in mind that nearly every player on the current roster is more talented than anyone of those teams. Don’t give up hope because I believe we’re on the verge of something special.