On Wednesday, the Oakland Athletics announced that they selected the contract of Barry Zito from Triple-A Nashville, bringing back one of the more colorful players in the history of a franchise which has a large number of colorful personalities. Sure, Zito was a little out there, but he also was very successful during his stint with Oakland. Zito, along with Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder formed one of the most feared trio of starting pitchers over the last twenty years. Considering this is Hudson’s final year before he retires and Zito can’t have too many pitches left (Mulder’s final year was 2008), now would be an appropriate time to revisit a time when Oakland dominated its division with Moneyball, on-base percentage, and oh yeah, stellar starting pitching.
The Oakland A’s of the late eighties and early nineties was an American League powerhouse. Their accomplishments are impressive – three straight pennants (1988-1990), one World Championship, and 306 wins in that three season stretch and another trip to the ALCS in 1992. The A’s did with power (Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Dave Henderson), speed (Ricky Henderson), pitching (Dave Stewart and Dennis Eckersley) and a great manager (Tony LaRussa). Oh yeah, steroids by the truckload helped too, but that’s neither here nor there.
During the mid-90s, the A’s started a downward trend toward mediocrity and once ownership changed in 1995, so did the cash pool from which to pay top talent. Therefore the big names gradually left and with it, wins. After general manager Sandy Alderson left to work in the commissioner’s office in 1998, his protege and assistant GM Billy Bean took over the financially-limited franchise. Beane immediately took the Moneyball principles that Alderson had tutored him on and began building a consistent winner despite being a small market team.
One thing the A’s didn’t lack in was good scouting and in the 1997, ’98, and ’99 draft they struck gold on three pitchers who would dominate the division and league for half a decade. In the 6th round of the ’97 draft they selected Auburn pitcher Tim Hudson. In ’98, with the second overall pick, the A’s picked Michigan State lefty standout, Mark Mulder. Then finally in 1999, with the 9th pick they picked USC star Barry Zito. The stage was set for a rotation that was going to help guide the A’s to their most successful stretch since they made three straight World Series.
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The first of the three to hit the big leagues was Hudson in 1999. He made 21 starts, was credited with 11 wins and posted a 3.23 ERA and 132 strikeouts in 136.1 innings of work. Hudson finished fifth in Rookie of the Year voting and while the A’s missed the playoffs, they were certainly a team on the rise. In 2000, Mulder and Zito joined the fray. Mulder struggled, posting a 5.44 ERA in 27 starts, but Zito tallied a 2.72 ERA in 14 starts and finished 6th in Rookie of the Year voting. Twenty-four year old Hudson won 20 games and finished second in Cy Young Award voting. Oakland won the division while winning 91 games, but lost the ALDS in 5 games to the Yankees (you’ll start to notice a trend).
In 2001, things finally came together for all three. They each finished in the top-25 in MVP voting and Mulder bounced back from a rough 2000 campaignto win 21 games and finish as runner-up in Cy Young Award voting. The team won 102 games and once again, forced the Yankees to five games in the ALDS, but once again fell short.
The wins came piling up in 2002 when the A’s tallied 103 (also included a 20-game winning streak) and it was Zito’s time to shine. With a stellar 23-5 record and a 2.75 ERA in 35 starts and 229.1 innings. Thanks to Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens, Zito was the only one of the three who was awarded for his efforts with a Cy Young Award. Like clockwork, the A’s lost the ALDS in five games, this time to the Twins.
The trio pitched well again in 2003 and the A’s, of course, lost in 5 in the ALDS to the Red Sox.
Financial restraints, which necessitated the implementation of Moneyball strategies, were the culprit of the breakup of the Big Three in Oakland as well. The big three pitched together for one more season in 2004 and then Mulder left in a trade to the Cardinals. In 2006, the Cardinals won the World Series, but that point Mulder was a shell of his former shelf and he only appeared in a total of 6 games between 2007 and 2008. Mulder finished with a career record of 103-60 and an admittedly pedestrian 4.18 ERA.
Hudson was traded to the Braves following the ’04 season and spent nine seasons there. He put up consistent numbers for a Braves team that no longer dominated the division like the 1990s, but Hudson even finished 4th in Cy Young Award voting in 2010. Hudson signed as a free agent with the Giants in November of 2013 (where he joined his old teammate Zito) and he helped San Francisco to a World Series title in ’14 where he contributed a solid outing in the NLDS against the Nationals.
Zito continued to put up big numbers in Oakland through 2006 before he wanted to get paid and obviously Oakland wasn’t going to come close to market value. He signed with the Giants for 7 years and $126M which at the time was the richest deal for a pitcher ever. Suffice to say, he didn’t exactly live up to the deal. In Zito’s seven season on the other side of the Bay, he posted a 4.62 ERA and a 1.43 WHIP and even though the Giants won two World Series titles during his stint there, he wasn’t even on the active roster for the 2010 run. Zito was signed as a free agent in February of 2015 by the A’s and as of Sunday, still hadn’t made an appearance since his call up to the big club on Wednesday.
| 2000-2004 | Record | ERA | IP | WHIP |
| Tim Hudson | 81-37 | 3.31 | 1104.1 | 1.207 |
| Mark Mulder | 81-42 | 3.92 | 1003.0 | 1.284 |
| Barry Zito | 72-40 | 3.41 | 981.0 | 1.227 |
| Total | 234-119 | 3.54 | 3088.1 | 1.238 |
These three aren’t quite in the category of the Braves of the 90s or the Orioles of the 70s, somewhat because of their lack of success in October, but also because their steak of success was short-lived. The realities of baseball economics was the demise for Oakland’s aces, even though it was during their dominance that Beane was able to experiment in other areas of the roster and bring sabermetrics to the forefront (the book and movie Moneyball touches on these areas in detail).
None of these three players will likely ever see the halls of Cooperstown, but for Oakland fans and followers of baseball, the early 2000s were a remarkable thing. Teams like the New York Mets of 2015 and their stable of young studs appears to have the potential to enter that upper echelon of pitching staffs, although Mets fans hope their October fortunes are vastly different.
