The Oakland A’s Pitching Staff Is No Longer The Worst In Baseball

Forbes Business SportsMoney The Oakland A’s Pitching Staff Is No Longer The Worst In Baseball Mark Deeks Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Writing analysis of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Mainly.

Following Sep 28, 2023, 11:58pm EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin HOUSTON, TEXAS – SEPTEMBER 11: Ken Waldichuk #64 of the Oakland Athletics delivers during the third . . .

[+] inning against the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park on September 11, 2023 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images) Getty Images They did it. Well, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Colorado Rockies did it, worse.

After beginning the season with a team ERA of 7. 86 that was on track not just to be the worst in the history of Major League Baseball , but the worst by miles , the Oakland Athletics have strung together enough good second-half pitching performances to actually move off of the bottom spot in team ERA. It was a spot they had occupied all season long, until recently, when the freefalling Colorado Rockies shot out to last place with their league-worst 5.

66 mark . Given the well-established disadvantage that the Rockies face playing at altitude when at home, and that the two teams are still an enormous distance from the marks set by all competitive teams, it is a modest achievement. But it is an achievement nonetheless, a small uptick in fortunes for an Oakland franchise that, on and off the field, has been going nowhere , looking for any kind of reason for hope.

41 players have pitched for the A’s this year, and only three were position players pitching in blowouts. That leaves 38 players filling what by convention is only 13 spots, which speaks to how insecure each of those 13 have been. Of those 38, 24 have at least one start, and only four have pitched more than 80 innings on the season.

There has been very little continuity; considering all the struggles, continuity would have been nonsensical anyway. That said, maybe now there can be some. All of the mid-season call-ups, waiver claims, Triple-A signings and trades have yielded the outline of a decent pitching unit, for both now and for the future.

The de facto ace, 27-year-old J. P. Sears, has a 1.

26 WHIP and . 249 batting average against over 168. 1 IP, which will serve him well once a severe home run problem is curtailed.

Alongside him, Luis Medina and Ken Waldichuk have gotten better throughout the course of the season, at least with their control; Waldichuk in particular has seemingly gotten on top of a walks problem that made him one of the worst offenders in the first half of the season, and the improved command has seen him pitch to a 4. 01 ERA over the last four months after a 7. 53 mark across the first two.

MORE FOR YOU Say Goodbye To McMansions And Hello To Minimalist, Simple-Sized Homes Delta CEO Apologizes, But Will JetBlue And Alaska Steal Elite Flyers? GOP Debate Viewership Tumbles 25% From First Event The Sears/Medina/Waldichuk trio were all acquired in last season’s trade of Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino to the New York Yankees, the biggest deal of the ongoing fire sale that was supposed to jumpstart a rebuild alongside the obvious constant cost-cutting. They cannot be considered prospects for much longer, if at all. Yet in the second half, there have been some dividends paid.

Veteran contributions have crescendoed slightly, too. Paul Blackburn has an ERA nigh-on identical to Sears at 4. 43 in his 20 starts, filling innings without imploding in a way that was too often lacking across the first half of the season, and at the back end of the rotation, veteran Trevor May has made his own difficult start a thing of the past with his improved performances in the closer role.

May will be a free agent again after what looks to have been his only season as an Athletic, yet in providing some back-end surety over the past couple of months, what looked to be a historically bad season in the history of the league will instead merely be the historically worst season in the last 117 years of the franchise. Which is slightly better, at least. More importantly, perhaps, there has been a clear-out of those behind the 7.

86 ERA. As notoriously spendthrift as they are, the A’s have done enough cutting and finagling at the end of the roster to relieve themselves of those who were only headed backwards; Spencer Watkins, Domingo Acevedo, Adam Oller, Rico Garcia, Chad Smith and Jeurys Familia were all paid to leave, while Shintaro Fujinami was dealt to (and somewhat rehabilitated by) the Baltimore Orioles. It could all have been worse.

By this point, then, the Athletics have a reasonable pitching staff, rather than a dreadful one. In the grand scheme of things, it will still be a 110+ loss season, the worst since the First World War and a particularly large nail in the coffin of baseball in Oakland. But to those clinging onto any shreds of something they can find, there are one or two poking out.

Amid all the uncertainty, Ken Waldichuk’s walk rate count as some kind of reason for hope. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Check out my website or some of my other work here .

Unless stated otherwise, all stats via Baseball Reference . All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook . Mark Deeks Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.