You’re Billy Beane. You’re sitting there on July 31st having just acquired Jon Lester, likely feeling about as good about your ballclub’s title chances as you have at any point during your tenure with the Oakland Athletics. After all, with Lester and Jeff Samardzija in the mix, in addition to Sonny Gray and Scott Kazmir in perhaps the most stacked rotation in the American League, what could possibly go wrong?<?h3>
Fast forward to September 30th. The A’s head back to Oakland after falling flat on their faces in yet another all-or-nothing game under Beane, ironically enough surrendering nine runs to the offensively inept Kansas City Royals. Oakland is once again left to pick up the pieces in what could very likely go down in the books, or at least franchise history, as one of the more epic collapses of all-time.
On July 31st, when the A’s sent Yoenis Cespedes to the Boston Red Sox in exchange for Lester in a shocker of a deal, the A’s were 66-41, on top of the American League and leading the Los Angeles Angels by two games in the AL West. From that point on, the A’s finished with the worst record in the American League, wrapping the season up with a 22-33 record after acquiring Lester, going 29-38 in the second half of the season overall. To just what should we attribute this collapse?
The narrative, and likely route that the national media will take, indicates that it was the trade of Cespedes that ultimately led to the downfall of Oakland. That might be accurate, but only to a pretty limited extent. Cespedes is an impact bat in terms of power and ability to knock in runs, as he hit five homers and knocked in 33 with Boston, but he’s not a big on-base guy, as he reached base at a clip of just .296 in his time following the trade. The falloff with Cespedes out of the equation was not tremendous. Instead if we’re going to blame the Cespedes trade, we can look at the chemistry aspect, or perhaps even the lineup protection argument, but these things are almost impossible to measure.
Not to dismiss the Yoenis Cespedes narrative completely, as large of a favorite it may be throughout the baseball world, that is simply not what is responsible for the A’s collapsing throughout the months of August and September. Instead, there are really any number of things we can point to in order to deduce just what went wrong for Oakland at the end, before Kansas City put them out of their misery.
- Reason #1: Brandon Moss. With Cespedes out of the picture, the onus was on Moss to continue to carry the offensive burden. While he can’t be blamed for the wild card failure, as he broke out in a big way, he did the A’s no favors down the stretch in struggling mightily at the plate. He hit just .173 in the last 58 games of the season and hit only four home runs, against 21 in the first half. An unacceptable stretch for a guy that finished with a solid enough 2.6 bWAR.
- Reason #2: Offensive struggles. Moss wasn’t the only player to come up short offensively, just the most important. But for an A’s team that was united in its ability to score runs in the first half, they came up short as a team in the second half. After scoring 4.91 runs per game prior to the All Star break, down almost a full run to 3.92. They didn’t flash the power in the same way, with 0.71 homers per game after the break, after over one per game prior to it. Team on-base percentage declined from .328 to .306. Really we could go all day with this. Bottom line is that the offense did not get the job done.
- Reason #3: Injuries – As ineffective as certain aspects of their game may have been, the A’s can throw a lion’s share of the blame to the injury bug. Josh Donaldson and Brandon Moss dealt with nagging injuries. There was a revolving door behind the plate due to injuries, including John Jaso. Coco Crisp was dealing with a neck injury and left the wild card game early because of a hamstring issue. For a team so heavily built around platooning, injuries took a larger toll on them than they may have on a club that doesn’t operate with platoons quite as much.
- Reason #4: Pitching woes. This reason alone could include a multitude of items. However, in this case we’re talking specifically about their penchant for surrendering the long ball. Before the All Star break, the Oakland staff allowed 80 home runs, which was in the top half of the league and the 19th most in all of baseball (which is good). Post-break, they leaped up to the fourth most allowed, allowing 67 in the second half, just four back for the most over that stretch. As a result, their ERA moved from 3.09 in the first half (just 0.01 back for the best mark) up to 3.42. Still a respectable figure, but a glaring issue nonetheless.
In reality, each of these reasons can be expanded and explored deeper to pick out each and every detail of just what caused the August/September collapse. Add in the Cespedes trade, to whatever degree that may be responsible, and that’s a solid five reasons, with a whole bunch of subheads underneath it.
Point is, there isn’t any one reason that the Oakland Athletics failed to reach anything resembling the expectations set forth by a record setting run differential in the first half. They were brilliant, absolutely mashing and employing a world class staff. In the end, there was just too much for a team that utilizes each and every one of its players in the lineup to overcome. It’ll be interesting to see how the A’s approach this offseason, with several impending free agents, but we can bet that Billy Beane will be active throughout the winter.
