Elephant Rumblings: Young position players offering hope, excitement

Happy Tuesday, all!

The first few games since the promotions of Tyler Soderstrom and Zack Gelof hasn’t translated to wins just yet. Since their debuts with the A’s on Friday the club is winless in four contests, including getting swept by a Twins team hovering around .500 but still in first place in the AL Central.

And yet if you’ve been watching the games you can tell there’s more energy among the players. The A’s were right in it until the end in every game of that Twins series, including a couple one-run losses. The offense has looked a lot better (outside of last night) and there’s a feel of more excitement for the team now.

The roster looks completely different than it did on Opening Day and that’s a good thing. The entire infield is either rookies (Ryan Noda, Jordan Diaz, Zack Gelof) or young players in their first full year in the big leagues (Shea Langeliers, Nick Allen~). And it’s more of the same in the outfield as the club used JJ Bleday, Brent Rooker, and Cody Thomas yesterday. And that doesn’t even include the injured Esteury Ruiz, who will be joining that group when he returns from his shoulder injury.

With such a young group there are going to be growing pains. But the club is finally focused on developing these guys in the big leagues. They used the first two months+ throwing away at-bats to the older veterans who’ve been a huge disappointment for the club. It wasn’t exciting but this group of youth the club has with their position player group is. It’s going to be fun watching them grow and develop with the A’s.

If only the pitching department was as exciting. The promotion of Mason Miller was a big day but the injury to his elbow put a damper on that. Lefty JP Sears has been a welcome surprise. But after that it’s been discouraging seeing none of the young guns step up. It’s not like they haven’t been giving away chances like Oprah but it’s just been a struggle. There needs to be a bigger focus on getting the young arms going here in the second half. If they do that, this could quickly turn into an exciting club within a year or two.

A’s Coverage:

• Toster: Red-hot Red Sox steamroll A’s in series opener
• McDonald: Athletics sign 1st-rounder Jacob Wilson
• Callis: A’s sign 2nd-rounder Ryan Lasko
• Dycus: Top prospects already making impact for big league club ($)
• Schultz: A’s owner Fisher backing ultra-long shot GOP presidential candidate
• NBC Bay Area: Dead and Company band member seen wearing ‘Sell’ shirt during concert

MLB News & Interest:

• Heyman: Ohtani ‘‘not getting traded” to Dodgers
• Gonzalez: Ohtani (finger) on track to start Friday
• Dykstra: Pirates call up two Top-100 prospects
• Simon & Langs: Longest name in MLB history? He has arrived
• Giants injury updates: Desclafani to return and start Tuesday
• Franco: Josh Donaldson’s season in jealousy over hamstring tear
• Reuters: Rays activate McClanahan, Yandy Diaz
• Feinsand: Yankees looking for upgrades across the board
• McDonald: Red Sox plan to approach Brayan Bello about extension
• AP: Reds call up prospect Christian Encarnacion-Strand
• ESPN: Johnny Bench apologizes for anti-Semitic jab at ex-Reds GM
• Today in Baseball History

Best of Twitter:

Not a good list to be at the bottom of:

The first rounder speaks:

A throwback name…

Even those odds seem too high: