A’s win seventh in a row behind dominant pitching staff

Olson, Canha and Piscotty continue their hot hitting with one home run each, but the pitching has led the way during the recent hot streak.

The Oakland Athletics won 6-2 over Seattle on Friday night, extending their season-long winning streak to seven games.

The A’s are 26-25, one game over .500 for the first time since April 24 when they were 16-15.

This is also their longest winning streak since Sept. 2017, when they won seven in a row from Sept. 17 to Sept. 24, although it only got them to 72-83.

While their bats have been hot – the streak began with a 17-run outburst against Detroit after not having scored more than five runs in nearly two weeks, and they have scored over eight runs a game and hit 19 home runs in the last seven– their pitching has been even spicier.

In fact, their pitching has been dominant for the better part of May, since their 14-1 win over the Pirates on May 3, helping to a 12-6 record since (including one that came in Mike Fiers’ no-hitter vs the Cincinnati Reds).

Some A’s pitching stats since May 3:

• The A’s have allowed 59 earned runs and have an ERA of 3 (Tampa Bay has the best ERA in the MLB this season at 2.98)
• They have allowed 134 hits on 639 at-bats, good for a BAA of .210 (Houston leads MLB with a .206 BAA)
• The pitching staff has a 1.14 WHIP in the past 18 games (Only three teams – Houston, LAD and Tampa Bay, who hold three of the five best records in the MLB – have a lower WHIP over the whole season)

This is with a pitching staff put together once again on the fly, seeing Mike Fiers, Brett Anderson, Chris Bassitt, Frankie Montas and Liam Hendriks, who have a combined 140-159 career record, put up seven wins in the last 18 games alone.

It was just last year that Fiers, Daniel Mengden, Edwin Jackson and Trevor Cahill – among 12 different pitchers to start a game – anchored a pitching staff that led the A’s to 97 wins.