Oakland A's oddities: Fourteen straight games scoring and conceding six runs or fewer

Has it seemed like the Oakland Athletics have played a lot of close games to open this season? Let's start with the headliner. The A's have neither scored more than six runs nor give up more than runs in any of their 14 games to start the year.

The 2016 club now owns the fifth-longest streak in franchise history of refusing to give up more than six runs in a game to open the season (the Baseball-Reference Play Index does not include 1904's 15-game streak). The 2016 A's are chasing the teams from 1904 (15), 1978 (16), 1992 (18), and 1981 (30).

This year's A's also own the fifth-longest streak in franchise history, and longest in Oakland history, of scoring six runs or fewer to start the season. 1972 was the last year the Oakland A's scored six runs or fewer in each of their first 13 games, a year where the season was delayed a couple of weeks due to a players strike and the last year that pitchers hit for themselves in the American League. Yup, it's the first time the A's have failed to score more than six runs in any of the first 14 games to open the season in the Designated Hitter Era.

By the way, those 1972 A's did just fine, as I recall.

It's a long way to go if the A's want to climb the leaderboard of offensive futility, however. Above the 2016 A's streak of 14 are the clubs from 1966 (27), 1915 (28), 1916 (29), and 1924 (39).

Other oddities

These 7-7 A's are 5-3 in one-run games; last year's A's did not get their fifth one-run victory until June 16, the 67th game of the season. Playing eight one-run games out of 14 total is quite a silly margin; the record for most one-run games in a season (since 1901) belongs to the 1971 Houston Astros, who played 75. The A's are on pace to play 92.

The 2016 A's became the fifth team in Oakland history to start the year 4-0 on the road, according to A's Baseball Information Services. The most recent were the 2013 A's, who started 6-0 on the road.

Jed Lowrie has been an impossibly clutch hitter, with nine RBI out of 14 hits and eight out of his first 10. A four-hit night helped bring his batting average to a respectable .286, and he scored the winning run on Mark Canha's RBI single.

.@dullsnacks11 is the first #Athletics pitcher since at least 1913 to begin the season with seven consecutive hitless outings

— Mike Selleck (@MikeSelleck) April 16, 2016