What Can Bob Melvin Say to Help the Oakland Athletics?
Anyone who stuck around for all nine innings of Sunday’s game against the Orioles deserves a healthy round of applause. The 18-2 debacle in Baltimore was so bad that even putting a position player on the mound couldn’t lighten the mood.
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After three hours and nine minutes of misery, the game was finally over, and Bob Melvin did something he probably should have done much sooner in this losing streak: he called a team meeting.
With as badly as the team has played, where would Melvin even begin? Here are three possible conversation starters for the manager of these terrible 2015 Oakland Athletics:
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“After careful consideration, we’ve decided to replace one randomly selected reliever with Ike Davis.”
Ike Davis hasn’t allowed a run in two innings this season, so there’s a good chance he’s only equally as terrible at pitching as any of the other relievers. It really doesn’t even matter who he replaces – if the reliever’s name was picked from a hat, there’s very little chance the A’s would miss whoever was selected. Possibly Pat Venditte, because his switch-pitching provides a little bit of light-heartedness to an otherwise dreary season.
On Sunday, Dan Otero’s ERA continued its upward trajectory, after he was charged with eight earned runs in just 1.1 innings of relief. Closer Edward Mujica gave up three runs, which only slightly increased his ERA to 5.64. Evan Scribner tacked on a run of his own, and now he’s averaging just under one earned run for every two appearances this season.
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In fact, it was only Davis and Fernando Abad who managed to enter scoreless appearances. Davis gave up a hit and a walk in an inning, while Abad allowed the same…in just a third of an inning.
The Athletics’ bullpen is horrendous. There’s absolutely no way around it. Whenever they begin to look like they’ve turned things around, they have a meltdown of epic proportions to even things out. Hopefully, next season’s relief crew will never be exponentially out-performed by a position player on the mound.
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“We’ve decided to bench Billy Butler in favor of literally any person who wants to pick up a bat.”
Imagine the Oakland Athletics’ position players sitting around the room, tensely waiting on the meeting to begin. Bob Melvin enters and assesses the crowd.
“Stand up if you’re being paid less than Billy Butler,” Melvin says, and every person in the room rises, except veteran Coco Crisp.
“Now, remain standing if you have a higher WAR than Billy Butler,” he continues, and at this, not a single person sits down – because Billy Butler has played his way into the highly sought-after role of Least Valuable Athletic.
Yes, the season has come to the point where publicly shaming Billy Butler may be the only recourse. He has provided less value to the team than any other offensive player, and the reasons to be fed up with him are numerous. Not only has he struggled to get on base, but his inability to run has clogged up the bases when he does reach first. Unlike with other struggling hitters (for instance, Sam Fuld), Butler has no defensive value. He’s being paid too much to take a roster spot away from a more valuable player.
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Perhaps Butler feels that he signed a big contract over the off-season, so there’s no reason to put in too much effort until he gets closer towards his free agent year. Perhaps he’s just not very good at baseball. But whatever the case may be, he’s been abysmal this season, and he’s hurting the team every time his name is penciled into the lineup.
His .235/.305/.359 line hardly seems like it’s worth over $6.5 million, but even if the Athletics wanted to unload him, who would take him? Butler has set himself up nicely in Oakland, and it’s time Melvin made a point of taking him out of the lineup until he’s ready to put in some time and effort to improve his game.
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“We’ve decided we actually stand a better chance defensively if we just don’t use a shortstop.”
If the relief pitching is bad and the offense has been hard to watch, the defense has been utterly disastrous. While Semien has certainly made an effort to decrease his recorded errors, he (and the rest of the team) have made plenty of mental mistakes during this losing streak that have cost the pitchers earned runs.
On Sunday, Semien collided with the very-fragile Crisp in the outfield, after failing to hear the veteran outfielder call for the ball. Neither player was seriously injured, but collisions often end with much more unfortunate outcomes. Crisp is too expensive and too (potentially) valuable to lose due to the misplay of a young infielder.
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There were plenty of other defensive misplays on Sunday – notably, Billy Burns looked as though he had never played center field before, bobbling a ball on one play and failing to make a diving catch on another. However, because Semien is the worst defensive player in the major leagues, he is the recipient of most of the criticism. And that’s probably deserved – the margin between Semien’s errors made compared to the player with the second-most errors made isn’t even close.
There are plenty of bad teams in baseball, and even some others within the A’s own division, but none appear to have given up on the year the way the Oakland Athletics have during this roadtrip. Despite Monday night’s loss, hopefully Bob Melvin’s actual words will encourage the team to begin playing like professionals again during the next series.