Category Archives: Oakland A’s UK

A regular column looking at the Oakland A’s from a British fan’s perspective

More Jingling all the A’s

Leave a reply

A few hours after I published my article yesterday, reporter Jon Morosi claimed that the A’s were close to re-signing pitcher Mike Fiers.

It’s not been officially confirmed as yet, but all signs point to this being a done deal, with the rumours saying that the contract is worth $14m-15m. That’s about what you’d expect to pay for an average starter on the free agent market so, as with the Joakim Soria contract, it feels like the A’s have set realistic targets and been able to get some good business done.

Fiers is no superstar and even the Coliseum can’t take away too much from his homer-prone nature. He gave up 32 longballs in 2018, the same as Bartolo Colon and Jakob Junis, with only James Shields (34) and Dylan Bundy (41!) giving up more in the Majors. However, even with the homers he was able to provide solid innings for the Tigers and A’s last year, as he had for the Brewers and Astros previously.

I mentioned yesterday that the impact of the A’s rotation in 2018 wasn’t one of a great strength, but doing enough to hold up its end whilst the bullpen, batting line-up and fielding did the rest. That’s likely to to be the plan for 2019 too and Fiers fits well into that.

My statement yesterday that the team needed 2 or 3 starting pitchers can come down to 1 or 2. I neglected to mention top prospect Jesus Lazardo solely because this time last year our hopes were high for A.J. Puk only for his elbow to go ping. Health depending, the Opening Day rotation group will be joined at some point by Lazardo and he could make a real impact in the second half of the season.

Another addition to a comment I made yesterday concerns our catcher options. Jon Heyman’s latest MLB notes column contained the following:

The A’s offered catcher Jonathan Lucroy a one-year deal for about $4M, but Lucroy has been hoping not to take a pay cut from the $6.5M he made last year. He did a nice job working with the A’s young pitchers last year, which is why they want him back

I had questioned whether the signing of Chris Hermann meant that the A’s were set at catcher. Whilst we may have moved on, there were so many positive comments by the A’s Front Office, Bob Melvin and Lucroy about the relationship as the season came to a close that it’s possible the lines of communication have been kept open. If Lucroy doesn’t receive a more lucrative contract offer by early February then a compromise might be reached and he may be back. One to keep an eye on, at least.

Jingle All the A’s

2 Replies

2018 was a wonderful year for fans of the Oakland A’s and we were given an early Christmas present on Friday to sign the year off on a good note. The team confirmed the rumoured signing of relief pitcher Joakim Soria and announced the more surprising capture of Jurickson Profar in a three-team trade involving the Texas Rangers and Tampa Bay Rays.

This season’s success was such a jump forward from the past three campaigns that there will be understandable questions as to whether it was a one-off. Only time will tell, but filling some of the holes that have appeared on the roster is a good way to start to address them.

The bullpen was a significant part of the A’s good season so it made sense to ensure that remains a strength. Although some seem surprised that the A’s picked up their $4.25m 2019 option on Fernando Rodney, he did well for us and keeping him in the fold – rather than creating another hole to fill – made sense.

Soria can be seen as the replacement for mid-season recruit Jeurys Familia, now back with the Mets on a three-year, $30m free agent contract. He’s a proven good relief pitcher and the two-year, $15m contract is what you’d expect to pay for such a player on this free agent market, so no complaints with that deal.

The addition of Profar will naturally be seen alongside the loss of Jed Lowrie. Jed was tremendous for us this season, and good under-the-radar in 2017 too, and unfortunately his timing ahead of hitting the free agency market made it likely he would price his way out of a return. I can’t wish anything but the best for him though and Profar is an intriguing replacement. His story as a former number one prospect bedevilled by injuries is well known and 2018 was the year in which he finally got to play regularly (146 games) and showed some of the talent that made him so highly regarded.

A’s general manager David Forst is quoted in the MLB.com article stating: “We feel like this is a guy who’s just getting to what he’s capable of … we feel like he’s really ready to break out as one of the stars of the American League”.

Sounds good to me.

What about other holes? Jonathan Lucroy is another player who did well enough in 2018 to raise his free agency contract expectations beyond the A’s comfort zone. Chris Herrmann has been signed as a free agent, although it’s not clear if the intention is for him to be the main catcher alongside Josh Phegley or if another player may join too. That may well depend on the A’s plans for prospect Sean Murphy who has earned plenty of positive reviews. My guess at the moment is that Murphy may be called-up before the All-Star break, if not even making the Opening Day roster, and the A’s may go with what they’ve got until then.

However, we all know where the gaping holes are on the roster.

The primary reason for pre-2018 scepticism was the starting rotation, a rag-bag bunch of maybes and probably-won’ts behind Sean Manaea. The additions of veteran pitchers Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson, followed by Edwin Jackson and Mike Fiers during the season, made a difference not in making the rotation a strength compared to American League rivals, but in preventing it from being a damaging weakness.

None of those veterans are around now, Cahill signing a one-year deal with the Angels this week and the others still out on the market, and Manaea is unlikely to pitch in 2019 whilst recovering from shoulder surgery.

Much as I hope for the best for all players in the A’s system, all that looking at the A’s current starting pitching options (RosterResource.com has the top five currently as Daniel Mengden, Frankie Montas, Chris Bassitt, Aaron Brooks and Paul Blackburn) tells you is that the A’s will be adding at least two, if not three pitchers to the group over the next few months. That’s not going to be easy though with the A’s ever-present budget restrictions meaning the Front Office is going to need to get creative.

It’s nothing new for David Forst, Billy Beane and company so we’ll see what tricks they can pull ahead of the A’s early MLB regular start in Tokyo, Japan in March.



No Seattle Sweep, but Two Wins to Smile About

Leave a reply

As Meatloaf once sang, two out of three ain’t bad.

The disappointment of the Oakland A’s not getting the brooms out on Wednesday to sweep the series over the Seattle Mariners quickly went away.

You can’t be unhappy at a series like that. It was two good teams coming together to play three close games (Game One being closer than the A’s would have liked).

Game Three on Wednesday was the UK-friendly day-game and everyone, including the home plate umpire, took MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s ‘pace of play’ mantra to heart in the get-away game before an off-day. They got through the nine innings in two hours, with the full twelve innings taking 3hrs 13 mins.

I had moved from watching on MLBTV to listening via the MLB At Bat when Matt Olson nearly won the game in the tenth inning. Zach Duke was brought in by Scott Servais to get a lefty-on-lefty match-up, but Olson drove a pitch deep to the outfield that had commentator Vince Controneo excited before it fell just short of clearing the outfield wall. Moments like that always seem even more exciting listening to radio commentary, blind to the footage and just waiting to hear what the outcome may be.

Olson’s double didn’t lead to the score-less tie being ended, just as the promise of Nick Martini’s lead-off triple in the fourth inning came to nothing. It felt like a big missed opportunity at the time given the way both starting pitchers – Mike Leake and Brett Anderson – were pitching, and so it proved.

It did at least give Dallas Braden the opportunity to revel in his use of the nickname ‘Dirty Martini’ for a little while, which always makes me laugh.

Two wins

Winning the series 2-1 felt all the better given the way the Mariners had swept four-games against the Houston Astros coming into it. I can’t see anything other than this Wild Card race going deep into September, possibly even the AL West division race too, yet every chance the A’s have to stop the momentum of one of their challengers is one worth taking.

The two victories were satisfying yet nervy in their own ways. Game Two was close throughout and, following James Paxton’s early exit, put us face-to-face with the old foe King Felix, who has thwarted our ambitions many times in the past. The King is not so regal now having been punted to the ‘pen, yet he showed some of his old touch in giving the Mariners 5.2 good emergency innings. Whatever shape Felix Hernandez is in, getting the better of him can’t help but taste sweet given the punishment he’s dished out over the years.

Game One looked like being a cakewalk, with Sean Manaea in excellent form, before the bullpen came unstuck and almost coughed up a 7-1 lead. I noted in the previous blog the risk of relying too heavily on the relief corps and I suspect it was no coincidence that this near-blow-up came a day after we needed six relievers to get past the Angels on Sunday.

Bob Melvin will be well aware of the challenge he has coming up in managing the pitching staff as the A’s are due to play 20 games in 20 days after the Thursday off-day. We’re going to need the starting pitchers to give us more innings, as they did in the Seattle series, so that the bullpen has a chance to be as effective as it has been to this point.

Fans in focus

The victory in Game One was partly overshadowed by criticism of the attendance, an admittedly sparse 10,400. As we wait for positive news on a new A’s ballpark, the familiar questions on whether a new stadium will lead to a long-term attendance boost in Oakland were raised again.

The way the A’s are playing this season, alongside all of the positive steps being made to reconnect with fans, do make the small crowds (Games Two and Three were slightly-more respectable 17,000) a real shame for the team and Front Office; however it shouldn’t be overlooked what damage has been caused to the casual fanbase by years of seeing popular players leave and the previous direction of casting admiring glances at other locations (particularly Fremont and San Jose).

After years of not being cared about, it’s going to take a while for the current A’s to win back the casual ticket-buyers that make all the difference to the attendance figures. What we’ve seen out of Dave Kaval and co over the past year and half makes me optimistic that they’ll be able to pull it off.

Series sheet

Here’s my Seattle series sheet.

Up next

After one big series against AL West rivals, it’s on to another with the Houston Astros. Friday’s game is a night-game, but both Saturday and Sunday’s games are 21.05 BST starts, so a great time to watch from the UK.

With Rodney, these A’s are no Plonkers

Leave a reply

Sunday’s series finale against the Los Angeles Angels felt like it had more riding on it than an early-to-mid-August match-up normally would.

You don’t need me to tell you that this is a huge week for the A’s, with the Seattle Mariners and Houston Astros coming to the Coliseum.

With the Mariners staging their own heroics by sweeping a four-game series against the Astros in dramatic extra-innings style, winning Game Three to win the series 2-1 in Anaheim ensures that Oakland should have plenty of confidence too.

Rodney you … hopefully more-than-capable relief pitcher

Before the Angels series began the A’s added yet another reliever to the ranks in the form of veteran Fernando Rodney.

It’s fair to say Rodney is not exactly a darling of the stat-crowd as for years now he has been a reliever who has often been given save opportunities despite his peripheral stats suggesting that he’s walking a tightrope most of the time.  I’ve often thrown in the odd Only Fools and Horses reference when his name has come up too, as it wouldn’t only be Del Boy who would be moved to shout ‘Rodney, you plonker’ in his direction at various points in his career.

But somehow everything all looks a bit different when a player puts on the Green and Gold.

His quirks – cap at an angle, bow-and-arrow celebration etc – are endearing rather than potentially annoying (although I’ve always liked that about him, largely as it runs counter to the buttoned-down, ‘play the game the right way’ nonsense that dictates players shouldn’t show their personalities once in a while) and as he’s likely to be used in lower-leverage situations than he has been at other teams he should be a useful addition to the crew.

Series sheet

Here’s my series sheet. Rodney made a couple of decent appearances, the second coming as part of a six-man effort on Sunday.

Bullpenning has become a popular tactic in the play-offs over the past few seasons. The A’s are looking like they will use a version of that approach for the final two months of the regular season too.

The A’s bullpen doesn’t have any obvious weak links now, albeit Ryan Buchter has been a bit up-and-down as the lone lefty. The only weakness may be the temptation for Bob Melvin to rely too heavily on them.  As always, it’s up to the starting pitchers to convince the manager that they can be trusted to go deeper into games more often.

Ramon Laurean-throw

There were plenty of good points in the series for the A’s, yet none that could match the catch-and-throw piece of wizardry by centrefielder Ramon Laureano in Game Two.

Often the best things that happen in sport are when a player puts convention to one side and dares to have a go at something that could backfire. Laureano knew full well that the ‘correct’ play at that point was to hit the cut-off man, but his instincts led him to take a chance and it resulted in a moment of magic.

You know you’ve seen something good when the commentators can’t help but laugh, and Dallas Braden’s “oh my god … oh my god” reaction was the cherry on the cake.

 

We all get fed up with the endlessly repeating clips during commercial breaks on MLB.TV, but I’m sure Laureano’s throw will be added to their playlist soon enough and I won’t get tired of seeing it however many times they show it.

Meanwhile, the man he replaced on the roster is reacting exactly as we hoped to his demotion.

Dustin Fowler has gone 23-for-44 (.523) over his last 10 games with the Nashville Sounds in Triple-A. He had been struggling for most of the season and, with the A’s doing so well, it had got to the point where Melvin couldn’t justify giving him at-bats, whilst knowing that only getting some pinch-hitting opportunities and the occasional start were not conducive to him finding some form.

Sending him to Nashville so that he could rebuild his confidence was the right call and the early returns are that it’s working out well all-round, with Fowler getting some hits and Laureano making a positive contribution to the Big League team.

Games coming up

 

You couldn’t ask for a more exciting week at this time of year. Not only do we have six great games, but three of them are at a convenient time for us to enjoy during the British evening.

Follow along via the @OaklandAUK Twitter account.

Dodgers won one, A’s won one, Series 1-1

Leave a reply

I’m not a big fan of two-game series, as the Oakland A’s just had with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

It’s not the lack of a winner, more that the series is over almost as soon as it begun. The difference between three games and two isn’t much, but it does make a difference.

Having lost Game One, with Sean Manaea struggling in what we have to hope was just a one-off bad night, you’ve got to be happy with a 1-1 series split, especially when Clayton Kershaw is posing a formidable obstacle to getting a win in Game Two.

With both games being 3.05 am BST starts, I had to settle for watching select innings on-demand and the MLB.com Game Recaps. That limited the amount of watching Dodger blue all over the Coliseum, although you can always count on the A’s fans that attend to shout down the opposing fans however many of them there may be.

Fiers on fier fire

The highlight of the short series had to be Mike Fiers’ A’s debut in Game Two.

There were several Dodger hitters less than impressed with home plate umpire Mike Muchlinski’s strike zone, none more so than Justin Turner when he was called out on strikes to end the top of the fourth. He had a point with the punch-out pitch, but the TV K-Zone showed the one before that he had shown his displeasure with caught the outside corner and, as Glen Kuiper pointed out on commentary, if Turner didn’t expect to be rung-up on anything close with the next pitch then he was the only person in the stadium to be surprised.

I didn’t realise Mike Fiers’ last start against the Dodgers was his 2015 no-hitter for the Houston Astros. It was a nice omen and you couldn’t be anything but encouraged with the way he went about his work. Much as it was a poor pitch to cough up Yasmani Grandal’s home run, that it came to lead off the fifth inning and was their first hit of the game showed how well he had stiffed the Dodgers up to that point.

Grandal also had the decency to give back to the A’s by dropping Manny Machado’s throw home to allow Marcus Semien to score the game-winning run in the eighth inning.

Getting runners home

It was also good to see the bottom third of the order, Stephen Piscotty and Ramon Laureano batting 7th and 8th respectively, knocking in runs in the fourth inning.

Fun as it is to watch Khris Davis thwacking yet another home run in Game One, we all know that the A’s have room for improvement when it comes to getting runners home when they’re not dispatching the ball into the seats.

Series sheet

As noted in my Tigers series update, I fill out my own series sheets to keep on top of what the A’s are doing. Here’s the Dodgers sheet. You’ll notice that I only note down the A’s side of things, other than showing the opposition’s starting pitcher.  It isn’t intended as a full record of the games, just my way of keeping track of how Bob Melvin is changing the batting line-up and using his bench and relievers.

I suspect most of it is obvious enough. Right-handers are written in blue, lefties in red, switch-hitters (Jed Lowrie) in green, with the numbers next to the hitters being hits and at-bats.

The one unique aspect to it is my RAGABU ‘system’ that I use to rate relievers. Pronounced raggaboo, it stands for Relief Appearance: Good, Average, Bad, Ugly and was my idea to have a shorthand note for relief outings (for starting pitchers I note their Game Score in brackets).

It’s purely intended as a bit of fun and a system in a loose sense of the word, in that there’s a basic structure behind the different ratings but I’ll subjectively push the rating up or down for a pitcher if I feel like it (for example, rating an appearance as Good rather than Average if they’ve been struggling a bit lately and it’s a positive return to form).

Up next: LA Angels

Where the series sheets come in really useful for me is in a three-game series such as our next one against the LA Angels.

Game Three on Sunday is a 21:07 BST start, but the first two games are at 3.07 am and 2.07 am for us in the UK, so I probably won’t catch all of them even with them being Friday and Saturday night (or Saturday and Sunday morning, if you prefer).

You get a decent oversight from reading game reports and watching highlights, yet it’s not the same as watching the games in full and I often feel a bit lacking when a Game Three day-game comes along and I haven’t watch the other games before it. Keeping my series sheets bridges that gap as it makes me look at the details a bit more than I would just scanning a box score.

Hopefully when I’m looking at it before Sunday’s Game Three there will be another win or two on the board in this surprisingly exciting A’s season.

It’s the A’s, rather than the Tigers, that are Grrreat

2 Replies

It’s been a while since I’ve written an Oakland A’s blog, but my plan for the rest of the season is to chart the A’s fortunes by publishing a review of every series.

Writing about a second consecutive series-sweep is a good way to start.

Brooms Out

Game Three of the A’s series against the Detroit Tigers was the usual 21.05 BST Sunday start and as I settled down to watch it two words came to my mind: be greedy.

The A’s had captured narrow one-run victories in the first two games and it would be natural to be glad to go into Game Three with a series win secured whilst hoping for another win. However, the best teams are never satisfied and with this being far from a classic Detroit Tigers team a sweep was there for the taking. Don’t be happy with 2 out of 3, was my thinking, grab all 3 while you can.

The A’s did just that and this time they put a few more runs on the board in the process. I still get the feeling that plenty of baseball fans don’t really know who Khris Davis, Matt Chapman and Matt Olson are, but all three hit home runs on Sunday and if they carry on in this form then they may well be the object of US national attention when October comes along.

Davis in particular is red-hot at the moment. He’s hit 10 home runs since 22 July and has 31 on the season, third in the Majors behind J.D. Martinez and Jose Ramirez (both on 33). His longball on Sunday was classic Khris, seemingly flicking a ball to right-centre that just kept on going.

Pitching performances and pitching additions

Arguably the most pleasing aspect of the series sweep was the contribution made by the three starting pitchers. Oakland’s outstanding bullpen has been heavily worked of late and so strong showings by Brett Anderson, Edwin Jackson and Trevor Cahill, the latter showing his veteran poise by settling in superbly after escaping a long 29-pitch first inning, were a welcome sight.

The A’s had been heavily linked with adding a starting pitcher at the trade deadline, yet a deal didn’t materialise and the announcement during Sunday’s game that the team had acquired reliever Shawn Kelly seemed to show that they had turned their attention to making their bullpen strength even stronger.

That was until a little while ago when I logged onto MLB.com to check the home run stats and found a breaking news banner flashing before me revealing that the A’s have signed starter Mike Fiers. He was in town already with Detroit so that will make the travel arrangements a little easier!

Fiers had been the name most widely linked with Oakland on the basis that he is a solid starting pitcher without being a guy who would require you to give up too much to get him. It’s a delicate balance for the A’s Front Office as you never want to let a potential play-off opportunity go to waste, yet the potential of a Wild Card one-and-done exit means that the low-payroll, and still rebuilding, A’s would be foolish to mortgage too much of their future in trading away good prospects for a short-term rental.

Although it’s not exactly the Astros signing Justin Verlander, Fiers fits the bill as someone who should be able to help out the rest of the way, so the move gets a thumbs-up from me.

Hello Laureano

It’s not always the bigger name additions that pop up with a useful contribution either. I was only vaguely familiar with A’s farm hand Ramon Laureano when he was called up to the Big League roster on Friday.  He made an instant impression on all A’s fans by making his first Major League hit a 13th-inning walk-off single in Game One, followed it up with a couple of good catches in centre field in Game Two and then demonstrated a perfect example of ‘good ole baseball fundamentals’ in Game Three when he singled home Matt Olson to break the deadlock in the fourth inning.

With runners on first and third, the A’s TV crew, the excellent Dallas Braden I think, were explaining that the gap was there on the right-side of the infield to shoot a single through. Right on cue, Laureano did a textbook job of keeping inside the ball and getting the runner home, something the A’s ideally need to start doing more of rather than being overly reliant on the longball.

Series line-up sheet

One of the many slightly quirky things I do in my baseball fandom is keep series sheets to keep a track of A’s batting lineups and how we are using our pitchers. With the next series only consisting of two games, I’ll leave the explanation for the next blog, but here’s the Detroit series sheet in any case.

Up Next

It’s an odd week for the A’s as we have an off-day on Monday, then a two-game home series against the Dodgers, then another off-day on Thursday before starting a weekend series in Anaheim.

The Dodgers don’t come to the Coliseum very frequently and as LA are one of the few teams who can match the A’s stunning form of late, it should be an excting, if short, series.  Subject to a last minute Fiers fill-in, the series is scheduled to be a southpaw showpiece, with Rich Hill and Sean Manaea starting Game One and Clayton Kershaw and Brett Anderson starting Game Two.

Unsurprisingly, both are night-games so they are 03.05 am starts for us in the UK. Work commitments will prevent me for watching either one live, but I’ll be keenly logging on at breakfast to read/watch all that happens.

Check back on Thursday for the next series review.

 

 

Thank You For The A’s: A Frustrating Opening Series

2 Replies

Having won on Opening Day in walk-off fashion, for the Oakland A’s to lose the four-game series 3-1 to the LA Angels was a big disappointment.

It’s only four games, nothing is decided and we shouldn’t be quick to draw too many conclusions; however even a ‘Desmond’ 2-2 series split would have felt a lot better.

It was a good series from a UK point of view in that three of the four games were 21:05 BST starts so we could get the season off to a flyer by catching the team live at a relatively convenient time.

The only night-game came on Friday and that meant I missed Sean Manaea’s excellent performance. He quickly became one of my favourites soon after his A’s debut in 2016 and whilst his overall numbers in 2017 were good rather than great, that was predominantly due to a rough spell in and around August.  Although I don’t see him becoming an ace, he’s got more potential than your average MLB fan would realise and his first start of 2018 bodes well for him having a breakthrough year.

What didn’t bode well was the general sloppiness in the field and also occasionally on the basepads.

Use what fielding metrics you like, none of them made for pleasant reading for A’s fans last year. Matt Chapman proved again in this series that he can make a big difference with that all on his own, yet overall there were too many moments when extra bases, or even extra outs, were handed to the Angels. You can’t afford to do that against good teams and expect to get away with it.

Halos hype

I’m not sure we learnt all that much new about the Angels; they don’t look like world-beaters yet should be a solid enough outfit and in play for the second Wild Card.

Zack Cozart looks a good signing for them especially as he gives them flexibilty to cover for other players if needed, as has happened with Ian Kinsler lasting all of one start before knackering himself. It’s not exactly the same situation, but you can draw some parallels with the A’s putting Khris Davis in left field to cover for Matt Joyce’s ankle soreness as an example of how things can go wrong when shifting players around to cover for injuries.

Shohei Ohtani’s debut got a huge amount of fanfare yesterday and, Chapman’s three-run jack aside, his performance showed why as his pitching arsenal looks formidable. It’s worth remembering that the A’s hitters hadn’t seen him before and that, whilst it was his MLB debut, this isn’t your typical rookie as he is an experienced professional pitcher.

The A’s should face Ohtani again in their three-game series with the Angels over the coming weekend, probably on Saturday, so it will be interesting to see how they get on having faced him once and with the opportunity to review footage of him from his first start.

Coming up

The A’s welcome the Texas Rangers into Oakland for four games before the next Angels series. The final game on Thursday is a 20:35 BST start, with the others all being in the early hours. Their Game One starter tonight is Bartolo Colon, so that’s got to be a good opportunity to get back to winning ways.

And Another Thing

It was great to watch A’s baseball again with Glen Kuiper and Ray Fosse and first impressions of Dallas Braden being added to the NBC Sports California announcing crew were very positive.

His hiring started off on a bad note with Mark Mulder, who was excellent in his work replacing Fosse for some games last season, being messed around and not brought back (that’s how it looked from the outside at least), but you can understand it more in some ways now as the role Braden is playing is different to that of your usual announcer.  He’s down at field level chipping in with thoughts and that worked really well in this opening series.

Braden is a character and adds some humour to procedings, but he knows when to reign it in and adds real insight into the game with his comments. Hopefully the recently-acquired sun shade will save him from getting burned to a crisp and he will continue to add something extra to the coverage over the course of the season.

Oakland A’s Season Opener: 21:05 on Thursday

Leave a reply

As I’ve got the day off work and can’t think of anything but baseball, I thought I’d do something vaguely useful with my time and look ahead to the A’s opener tonight at 21:05 BST.

After inheriting the Opening Day assignment in 2017 due to Sonny Gray being ill, Graveman will take the mound this time as the A’s nominal ace.

I say nominal ace as even the most optimistic A’s fan wouldn’t really put him in the ace bracket, but he’s the leading starting pitcher among our current crop alongside Friday’s starter Sean Manaea.

Looking back at his Opening Day start a year ago, Graveman did a decent job in limiting the Angels to 2 runs over 6 innings.  He did that throwing his sinker almost exclusively. There were a few cut fastballs thrown in here and there, yet otherwise it was sinker, sinker, sinker.

Athough he does throw his sinker a lot, that was a bit extreme, perhaps with him not quite having a feel for his change and curve in his first start, and more generally over the 2017 season this was his pitch breakdown according to Brooks Baseball:

  • Sinker: 65% of the time (approx 94 MPH)
  • Cutter: 15% (91)
  • Change: 10% (86)
  • Curve: 6% (80)
  • Other 4%: varations of a fastball.

As with most pitchers, the overall numbers obscure the different approaches taken against right or left-handed hitters.  Against righties he went to the sinker almost 80% of the time, then 10% cutter, 10% curve (very occasionally chucking a change into the mix). Against lefties, he significantly increased his cutter (23%) and change-up (22%) usage, bringing his sinker use down to approximately 50% and then throwing a few curves in here and there.

For those new to baseball, that’s quite typical among pitchers. A right-handed pitcher will tend to use a curve against a right-handed hitter and a change-up against lefties, and vice versa for a left-handed pitcher.

The Baseball Savant website does a great job of visualising how a pitcher has approached different hitters and the outcomes of that.  Here’s a link to the page for Graveman’s work against the Angels.

Line-up

The starting line-up hasn’t been announced at time of writing. The A’s are facing right-hander Garrett Richards and faced a righty (Chris Stratton) in their final exhibition game on Tuesday, so if we use that as a guide then it would be:

  1. Joyce (LF)
  2. Semien (SS)
  3. Lowrie (2B)
  4. Davis (DH)
  5. Olson (1B)
  6. Piscotty (RF)
  7. Chapman (3B)
  8. Maxwell (C)
  9. Powell (CF)

I suspect Jonathon Lucroy will be in the line-up instead of Maxwell, but we’ll find out soon enough.

21:05 BST

The game is scheduled to begin at 21:05 BST and is available to watch online for MLB.TV subscribers. Join myself and the rest of the OaklandAUK fanbase on Twitter tonight.

 

Thank You For The A’s: New Season Excitement, but Bad Luck with Puk

Leave a reply

The time difference between the UK and US creates a unique experience in following MLB from these shores.

With many games being played in the early hours for us, breakfast time during the baseball season takes on an added dimension. The tone of your day ahead is set by what appears on your phone/tablet/laptop as you sit down with your cereal and wait for MLB.com to load up on your chosen team’s page.

Yesterday morning I checked MLB At Bat and thought about the daily rollercoaster of emotions that was about to begin.  I didn’t expect that rollercoaster to set off this morning though.

There it was staring straight at me: “TJ surgery recommended for top prospect Puk”.  The shining light during Spring Training, the pitcher we were looking forward to following his progress in Triple-A before a mid-season (or earlier) call-up to the Big Leagues, a potential ace for us to be proud of.

What a way to ruin your cornflakes.

A.J., we hardly knew ye but we had placed our hopes on you as intently as a pigeon sits waiting for a chip to fall to the floor. We’ve had slim pickings for several years now and you offered the potential for something that us A’s fans don’t get to experience all that much: a young pitcher that fans of other teams wish was on theirs.

You weren’t going to be on the Opening Day roster and you were unlikely to lead us to the play-offs this year. In some ways, if your arm was going to give out then better now than in two years’ time when you’d settled into the Big Leagues and had a potential play-off team around you. If you make a full recovery, who knows, maybe you’ll be a bullpen weapon as the A’s make a play-off charge next September before starring in the rotation in 2020?

All is far from lost, but at a time of the year when everything should be filled with optimism and positivity, this news is like being presented with a cake and then someone comes along and takes the chocolate icing bits off it.  It’s still a lovely cake to enjoy, yet you’ll enjoy it knowing that it could have been even tastier.

Here’s hoping the surgery – still not confirmed but seemingly inevitable – and recovery goes well.

Opening Day roster

I’ve said before that the A’s season will come down to how the rotation supports an improved bullpen and very promising batting line-up and that’s coming even more sharply into focus.

Puk looks to be following Jharel Cotton to the operating theatre for Tommy John surgery and Paul Blackburn’s forearm strain seems ominous too. We entered Spring Training with a battle for starting rotation spots and hopes that a few players would put their hand up to grab a place. We’ve ended up with a rotation based on whose arms are physically able to allow them to put their hand up.

I jest, of course, as Kendall Graveman, Sean Manaea, Daniel Mengden, Andrew Triggs and Daniel Gossett all have talent and now is the time for them to show it. Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson are waiting in the wings – and wouldn’t it be a great story if they are able to stay healthy and become effective A’s starters once again – so there is a bit of depth there, albeit not depth that comes with any guarantees.

The main position player decision still to be made is in centre field. Reading between the lines I get the impression that whilst the A’s ultimately see Dustin Fowler as the centre fielder, it may make sense to start him in Triple-A after the long lay-off from knee surgery last summer. That would give Boog Powell a chance to show what he can do out there, with Jake Smolinski a right-handed bench option who appears to be something of a favourite of Bob Melvin.

Here come the Halos

Click the thumbnail for the full March/April schedule

It all gets going on Thursday at the wonderfully UK-friendly time of 21.05.  The LA Angels are in town for a four-game series, with Shohei Ohtani scheduled to make his Major League debut (on the mound, at least) on Sunday.

Kendall Graveman will get the Opening Day assignment against the Angels for the second consecutive year and he did a decent job last time, giving up two runs over six innings.

The games on Saturday and Sunday are day-games too so the season will begin in a very convenient fashion for us.  Even the night-game on Friday is a bit more manageable than usual coming in the early hours of Saturday as part of the Easter weekend.

Despite our pitcher injury woes and modest expectations for 2018, nothing can dull the excitement of a new season and the adventure we’re going to go on together over the next 162 games with the A’s.  I’ll be blogging about it all season long and commenting on Twitter via my usual account and at the A’s UK fan account @OaklandAUK.

Thank You For the A’s: Ode to Lucroy

Leave a reply

It appeared that the Oakland A’s had made all of their moves this offseason, but the addition of catcher Jonathan Lucroy has given the team a mid-Spring Training boost.

This time last year we had Stephen Vogt as the main catcher with Bruce Maxwell and Josh Phegley competing for the back-up role.

After Vogt was DFA’d in June, neither Maxwell nor Phegley stepped up to claim the starting position, yet it looked like the A’s would go again with that duo to see if one or both could take a step forward at the second time of asking.

Lucroy’s disappointing 2017 campaign came at the worst time for him as he headed into the off-season as a free agent who, just 2 years before, was seen by many as one of the best all-round catchers in the Majors. Add that to the strange free agent market this winter and it meant that rather than signing a lucrative multi-year deal, Lucroy was left waiting to sign whatever decent offer he could get.

That’s worked out well for the A’s. Although both Lucroy’s offensive and defensive numbers went backwards last year, it would be a surprise if that’s a conclusive sign of terminal decline. There’s still plenty of talent there and, given that it’s just a one-year, $6.5m deal, well worth the A’s taking the risk that he will bounce back.

If he does then we shouldn’t be too surprised if he’s playing for another team come August. As with the Rich Hill deal a couple of seasons ago, the second-best plan (after the A’s mounting a surprising challenge at the top of the AL West) would be for Lucroy to give us three good months or so and then be traded away to add another prospect or two into the system.

The initial suggestion is that Maxwell may be the odd man out. Maybe the idea is they want him to get more work in and that will be easier done in Triple-A rather than occasional starts in the Majors, but it would leave the A’s with two right-handed catchers and Phegley may find his chances to start against lefties take a hit, so we’ll have to wait and see how that pans out.

I’ve written an A’s season preview for Bush League Ramble, which should be published later this week, and within that I note that it’s a shame there wasn’t a decent starting pitcher option on the market this winter to add a veteran presence to the A’s rotation. Signing a good catcher is the next best thing.

The advanced stats, such as pitch framing, showed Lucroy took a big backward step last year after previously having a very positive reputation behind the dish. To fall off so dramatically seems odd, making me think there is more to the story, possibly an undisclosed injury, which would provide an explanation.

If Lucroy can get his catching back on track then that should be a big help to the starting rotation that as a group – so far this spring – has not pitched as well as they would have liked.

I backed Lucroy last year by adding him to my main fantasy team. Hopefully this year he’ll show that my confidence was well-founded, if one year too early (or late, depending how you want to look at it)

Patience (AKA calm the Puk down)

The pitcher who has impressed the most this off-season is top prospect A.J. Puk. His three appearancse so far have shown the rich talent he possesses and it’s making some A’s fans impatient to see him on the Big League team.

His potential importance to the A’s future means that I wouldn’t want to see him rushed up. His 2017 season had much to admire about it, yet it also showed there were some rough edges to smooth off, not least improving his command and getting his walks down.

Eight Spring Training innings don’t change that picture. Let him work on his craft for a few months in Nashville, managing his innings pitched along the way, to give him the best chance of staying up when he’s finally brought up.

Chapman clout

Matt Chapman’s had a slightly disrupted Spring, so it was enjoyable to listen to him make his first hit a home run at Hohokam on Sunday against the Cubs.

One of the reasons I still like listening to ball games is the couple of seconds of suspense when you know the ball’s flying, but can’t judge just how far until the crowd and commentator tell you. Donny Baarns has done an excellent job once again providing additional radio coverage on MLB.com for select A’s games this spring and he called that one perfectly, even if the crowd reaction was mixed with so many Cubs fans on hand at their old Spring Training home.