Since taking over from Sandy Alderson as A’s general manager in 1998, Billy Beane had prided himself that his team has never cratered despite payroll and stadium problems. In that time, the A’s always have been respectable and never won fewer than 74 games.
But that might be about to change. Oakland is 51-69 — a 69-win pace. The A’s just helped the Yankees’ competition by going 0-7 on a road trip through Baltimore and Toronto.
Beane and his lieutenants always have been excellent at making pro-active moves, getting a lot out of players and trading them before they got too expensive to regenerate their roster. But so much went wrong this year. The A’s notably traded their best player, Josh Donaldson, to Toronto for a package of players that are useful at best, while Donaldson just might be this year’s AL MVP. They invested a three-year contract in Billy Butler, who has been double-play prone and not nearly productive enough.
Beane went for it last year, trading Yoenis Cespedes for Jon Lester and Addison Russell – among others — for Jeff Samardzija. But Oakland faltered down the stretch and lost in the wild-card game. The absence of Russell – a shortstop you could build around – is stark now, especially since Oakland dealt Samardzija to the White Sox for Marcus Semien, who has been an error machine at short.
Beane moved his three big potential free agents – Tyler Clippard, Scott Kazmir and Ben Zobrist – before the trade deadline to try to build toward the future.
Despite the worst record, the A’s are plus-three in run differential, which accentuated how bad they have been in one-run games (13-27) and the possibility that luck has worked against them in 2015.
However, they also must deal with simply not getting a lot of production from their system. As of last week, they had used just four players in 2015 from their own farm system – by far the fewest in the majors. One (Sonny Gray) is an impact player. Their fine closer, Sean Doolittle, has been limited to one inning due to a shoulder injury. The remaining two – Arnold Leon and Max Muncy – have been superfluous contributors.