The great thing about baseball is that no matter how tough a loss may be there is always a game tomorrow. Except, of course, when there isn’t. It’s harder to ‘turn the page’ when you have just read the last page of the book and have to wait until the sequel is released.
Still, 48 hours does wonders for the baseball soul and I am now ready to stop rehashing complaints from Wednesday preferring instead to ponder how the A’s can best position themselves for another run in 2019.
What happened Wednesday was concurrently simple and complex. Quite simply, the Yankees threw a series of excellent pitchers all of whom pitched well and the A’s were unable to produce enough offense to compete in the game had it turned in a number of possible directions. At the same time, with the capability of getting 7 IP from the trio of Lou Trivino, Jeurys Familia, and Blake Treinen, the A’s didn’t seem to know who their best pitchers were, opting for an ‘opener’ who gets tightest in high leverage and a reliever, Fernando Rodney, who was running at ‘50/50 train wreck’ to Familia’s ‘10/90’.
So the Yankees threw the right pitchers and they all thrived, the A’s made a couple suspect choices and they backfired, but at the same time the Yankees were also a dominant 100-win team playing in their home ballpark against a young team mostly experiencing the post-season for the first time, absent a clear option to start the game and navigate the early innings. The odds were never in Oakland’s favor and unfortunately this time the A’s were unable to parlay “2018 magic” alone into an upset. And it goes.
Moving forward the A’s clearly have to figure out how to put together a starting rotation that can offer more stability, while also maintaining a dominant bullpen capable of turning 5-6 IP starts into wins — because it appears unlikely the A’s will manage to construct a rotation of 5 horses so much as perhaps a group of mid-rotation type SPs.
Regarding the rotation, certainly the A’s can try to find gems in the scrap heap, as they did with remarkable success in nabbing Trevor Cahill, Brett Anderson, and Edwin Jackson at the 11th hour, not to mention Mike Fiers at the 11.9th hour. However, that is a risky strategy to rely on and was not even Oakland’s Plan A, B, or C this year.
Similarly, I caution against using the free agent market to try to cure what ails the rotation because the free agent market is notoriously a place teams overpay for past results and no more so is this true than with starting pitching. The starters you want will be far overpriced and the ones you can afford will just be more expensive versions of the Cahills and Jacksons you can try to snag on the down low.
So I envision Oakland going into the off-season pursuing 1-2 blocked, or young and not yet established, starting pitchers via trade, as they have done in the past with the likes of Danny Haren, Jarrod Parker, and Gio Gonzalez. We will see if the A’s, without disrupting the key core, have the trade chips to cash in on a worthy young SP they can gamble is ready to thrive in the big leagues, but potentially players such as Mark Canha and Dustin Fowler, or prospects such as Sheldon Neuse and Jorge Mateo, could garner enough interest to pry a blocked or stalled pitching prospect away.
Certainly there are rotation possibilities who are not currently even starting for their teams who might give the A’s rotation a shot in the arm. Kenta Maeda is one, A.J. Cole another (and we haven’t acquired him for a couple years, so we’re due), along with all the “big league ready” prospects yet to prove themselves. I won’t be surprised if the A’s use the trade market to try to fortify their rotation, though knowing how it works, if the A’s do consummate a deal I will probably be surprised at the names going in each direction.
As far as the bullpen is concerned, we all know how volatile bullpens are from year to year and so it’s generally not a wise course to just roll with the same group that gave you success hoping they repeat their success. The trick is to know who to count on and from whom to move on.
The two relievers I believe in building around long term are Blake Treinen and Lou Trivino. The A’s will probably let Familia go just due to his asking price and while they may pick up Fernando Rodney’s relatively affordable $4.5M option personally I hope they don’t. I was already skeptical enough of Rodney’s reliability before he was quoted (by Bruce Jenkins quoting ESPN), as saying “Once I saw how Aaron Judge hit that ball (two-run homer in the first inning), I thought to myself, this is over.” This from a reliever who came into a game that was clearly still winnable in the 6th inning and helped turn a 2-0 game into a 6-0 blowout. Really, Fernando? Perhaps your cap is straight and it’s your head that isn’t. In my opinion, the A’s should move on from “The Fernando Rodney Experience” and spend that $4.5M elsewhere.
With any luck, J.B. Wendelken is ready to move into the role of “surprisingly dominant reliever,” and as disappointing as Emilio Pagan was in 2018 it feels to me like he is exactly the type of reliever who can be as good as he was (or as bad as he was good) from one season to the next. At the end of the season, Ryan Dull showed glimpses of his 2015-16 form, so from this returning trio it’s possible the A’s can replace some of what they may be losing.
Additionally, they have potentially effective multiple inning relievers from the “out of options” group that includes Frankie Montas and Chris Bassitt, along with the solid and versatile Yusmeiro Petit. And Ryan Buchter remains a solid LH reliever. So in-house possibilities exist to recreate a wipeout bullpen with or without Familia and/or Rodney.
Where Oakland may, and should, look to add is another LH reliever. Sometimes those can be acquired in under-the-radar deals, such as how the A’s landed Buchter and before him Fernando Abad, or even on the waiver wire, which is how the A’s added Craig Breslow.
Would I like to see the A’s splurge for another plus reliever such as free agent to be David Robertson? Sure, but not at the expense of extending Khris Davis or re-signing Jed Lowrie or making sure they have a starting catcher who isn’t Josh Phegley. So in reality, no.
How do you see the A’s cobbling together a pitching staff capable of leading Oakland to another season of 97-or-so wins and a chance to compete for the division or at least another wild card game? It won’t be easy, but it may be possible and it should make for at least an interesting winter — and hopefully summer.