by Jerry Feitelberg

The A’s head into the Home Stretch

The A’s played their 113th game of the season Wednesday afternoon at the O.co Coliseum. Things did not go well for the A’s as they lost the game. The A’s have forty-nine games left to play and they are scuffling at the moment. The A’s have split the last twelve games against the Texas Rangers, Houston Astros, Kansas City Royals and Tampa Bay Rays. The play the Minnesota Twins the next four days and , hopefully, they will beat them all four games. The A’s had an opportunity to pick up ground on their closest rival, the Los Angeles Angels, but failed to do so and if the Angels beat the LA Dodgers Wednesday night the A’s will be just one game ahead of the Angels in the race for the AL West division crown.

As mentioned earlier, the A’s hitters have been scuffling and the offense has gone south. This happens to all teams as the season is made up of peaks and valleys. When things are going well, the pitching, starters and relievers, the hitting and fielding are all in sync in the team can rack up wins. However, sometimes the pitching isn’t there but the team is getting hitting. Sometimes the hitting isn’t working but the pitching is good. That is the situation the A’s find themselves in right now as the season is moving quickly to the finish line. The A’s have four outstanding starters in Lester, Gray, Samardzija and Kazmir and the fifth starter, Hammel, got his act together for his first win as an Athletic. The hitting has not been there. Brandon Moss is in an 0 for 18 slump. Steven Vogt is at least 0 for 22 and can’t buy a hit.Coco Crisp has been out with a bad neck and is just now back in the lineup. Josh Donaldson’s production has also slowed down. The hot hitter is Josh Reddick. Reddick os hitting over .380 since coming off the DL but there is no consistency in the offense. Another factor may be the trade that sent Yoenis Cespedes to Boston. Many, many fans are unhappy with the trade but the A’s got knocked out of the playoffs by the Detroit Tigers the last two years in the first round of the playoffs and General Manager Billy Beane felt it necessary to get a top of the line pitcher and in order to get Jon Lester from Boston he had to give up something and that something was Cespedes.

The A’s believe in the platoon system and the versatility of the players to be able to be utilized at different positions and be able to use left-handed hitters against righties and right-handed hitters against lefties and they have been successful all season long using that strategy.The A’s will be tested next week when they go on the road to Kansas City and Atlanta. The Royals took two out of three from the A’s here this week and they are in the hunt for a wild card spot. The A’s play four with the Royals and

they need to win at least two of the games. Then it’s Atlanta for three. The Braves have been playing poorly as of late but the A’s cannot take them lightly. The A’s return home for two with the Mets and then play the Angels seven times in a ten day stretch. The schedule after that is easier for the A’s but this is baseball and anything can happen. The A’s are going to find a way to get the hitting, pitching and fielding all working together or the A’s could fall out of first place in the west but still make the playoffs as a wild card but that would mean having to face the second wild card in a one game playoff and anything can happen. Stay tuned fans as it should be interesting from now until September 28th.