by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

Yes they could. Today only the Houston Astros have a winning record among the five teams, and even teams like Texas can beat anybody on any given day, such is the nature of baseball. But this year the Astros might not win the division, but they are a most improved team, with a 40 year old manager and former A’s catcher A.J Hinch and a much better bullpen, at the end with Luke Gregerson who was with the A’s bullpen prior to this season, he is closing and doing the job.

After trading the heart of the lineup in the span of a few months, first Yoenis Cespedes on July 31, 2014 and then Josh Donaldson to Toronto this winter, Athletics baseball was a new team, a new entity. But this new entity is not necessarily better than the 2014 team that lost because Jon Lester could not the lead them on the wild card game against Kansas City.

In the Bay Area many people consider A’s general manager Billy Beane a “genius”, I am not in that crowd. He could be a genius if the consideration is that he saves money for the team, and has been able to compete with the big boys. But a real genius at least wins a couple of pennants, and even maybe a World Series or two. Its either that or we have lowered the standard of the word genius.

However, all good runs come to an end. There is a lot of season ahead in 2015, but the Athletics right now look like a team lost for transition, a team actually looking for that identity that they had. Who are the 2015 A’S?

That question may or may not be also be on the mind of the top brass of the team. We all know that for the A’s to have a good season at the gate, they mostly won early in the season, or the people(come July)would forget about them, pack up and go to the beach in Santa Cruz.

Anybody that has been in the Bay Area for a long period of time, and lived here for a long period of time (like yours truly who has lived in the Bay Area since 1969) realizes that the Bay Area has been Giants territory, many years before they moved into cozy AT&T and won three World Series in five years. Before the famous territorial rights announcement that they own San Jose and the A’s do not.

Anybody with any type of memory remembers that even when the A’s were winning their three consecutive World Series titles in 1972-73-74, the Giants who were not a winning then were still the darlings for the media and fans, and always got the headline above the A’s. Maybe is because the Giants arrived in the bay before the A’s, or for whatever reason, that has always been the case in Northern California.

The only time when the Athletics really came up to the front and became a very popular franchise even challenging the Giants, was during the Walter Haas ownership, when they built a strong team-organization and made it to three straight World Series in 1989, 1990 and 1991. The Haas ownership invested in the team and more important, invested in the community and it paid dividends. Former A’s players Rickey Henderson, Dave Stewart, Jose Canseco, Bob Welch, Mark McGwire, Dennis Eckersley, they had real star power, which translated to the first team surpassing the two million in attendance in the Bay Area.

Today’s Athletics have a couple of months to find out who they are. If by mid summer they are still trying to find out, then it will be too late. They have plenty of time to correct their woes, but on the other hand they are in uncharted territory since in the previous seasons they have always excelled during the first part of the season. Today they are in last place, not a place where the Athletics have been used to occupying in recent memory.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish TV voice for the Angels and the Spanish radio voice for the A’s and does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com