{"id":14188,"date":"2012-07-24T12:17:25","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T11:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=14188"},"modified":"2012-07-24T12:17:45","modified_gmt":"2012-07-24T11:17:45","slug":"putting-the-as-in-amazing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=14188","title":{"rendered":"Putting the A’s in Amazing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Oakland<\/a>My original plans for regular features here at BaseballGB during the 2012 season got moved around a bit, for various reasons.<\/p>\n

One that completely fell by the wayside was a regular column (weekly or maybe bi-weekly) about supporting the Oakland A’s. Most, if not all, people following baseball will support a team and the emotions, frustrations and occasional excitement that we live through provide a never-ending source of stories to tell.<\/p>\n

2012 seemed like a good year to start on this feature because my expectation, like most A’s fans, was that this was going to feel like a long season. From celebrating the fleeting moments of promise from some of our younger players to lamenting a run of poor results as a basic form of therapy, documenting my thoughts would be a good way to get through the year.<\/p>\n

I even produced a list of pun-tastic names for the said column (Thank you for the A’s, A’s and Confused etc).<\/p>\n

I’ll leave those names to one side, but I’m going to move ahead with putting together some thoughts on the A’s season as it’s turning out to be a much better season than I or most other A’s fans could have hoped for.<\/p>\n

The A’s had won 9 of their previous 10 games heading into last week and had a difficult-looking two series in prospect against the Rangers (2 games) and the Yankees (4). Playing .500 over those six games would have been a respectable result considering the standard of opposition and a great way to follow up that 9-1 sequence.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, the A’s shared a win apiece with Texas and then swept the four-game series over the Yankees. Fourteen wins from your last sixteen games will get you noticed and national baseball writers, hitherto paying little attention to one of the two non-Rangers and Angels AL West teams, are starting to question whether this Oakland team are a genuine playoff contender.<\/p>\n

Looking at the A’s recent form from an analytical point of view does produce a number of red flags that make it seem likely that it isn’t sustainable.<\/p>\n

For example, we have the worst batting average in the Majors (.228) and the third-worst OPS (.680), while our pitching staff has the second-lowest number of strikeouts (625). The manner of our recent victories also may be telling. Winning one-run games and relying on walk-offs is a lot of fun, but it’s also a sign that we are only just scraping through. There is a sense that we’re using smoke and mirrors to pull this off and that the magic will only last for so long.<\/p>\n

I don’t take any offence at this argument because there is clearly some truth to it. The point is, as a fan, I don’t much care. If the magic wears off soon then so be it; there’s no doubt that it all feels pretty magical at the moment.<\/p>\n

Time and time again we’ve suffered at the hands of the Yankees. Even when things were going well, you just knew that the Bronx Bombers would find a way to battle back and break your heart once again. For one four-game series that was turned on its head. This time it was the A’s that always seemed destined to fight back and come out on top.<\/p>\n

As Coco Crisp put it<\/a>: “It definitely feels good to battle and be victorious against the best teams, on paper, in the game … you can look up and down a lot of lineups like Detroit, or the Angels, the teams with high payrolls. Obviously they have high payrolls for a reason, because the players on the team deserve it. When we battle against those guys and come out with wins, it’s definitely a great feeling”. Amen to that.<\/p>\n

No one can expect a team to continue such incredible form for ever. The A’s will come back down to earth, the question is will that still involve winning our share of games or is a slump on the horizon?<\/p>\n

After taking Monday off, the A’s are scheduled to play on 16 consecutive days, starting with a three-game series in Toronto before heading to Baltimore, so the next couple of weeks will be a real test of the A’s credentials.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oakland’s incredible recent form has this A’s fan dreaming of an unlikely playoff place<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553,128],"class_list":["post-14188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2","tag-oakland-as"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14188"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14194,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14188\/revisions\/14194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}