The Oakland Athletics Aren’t The Team You Think They Are

The Oakland Athletics are not a good baseball team.

They’re in last place in their division. They feature a -66 run differential, both of which have left them in league with the dregs of the Major League Baseball standings. The Chicago White Sox, Colorado Rockies, Miami Marlins, and Los Angeles Angels. Inarguably, they (along with the A’s) comprise the five worst teams in baseball. Losing is what they were designed to do.

But don’t get it twisted. Despite intense apathy from an ownership group bent on abandoning their city, the Oakland Athletics aren’t like those teams. In fact, they’re better. Not necessarily the better than their record indicates flavor of better. More like this team is far more interesting than we give them credit for brand of better.

And that’s the highest compliment I can offer a team. That they’re interesting.

 

What the Oakland Athletics Are

 

The A’s sit at the bottom of the American League West. They’re a few games behind the Los Angeles Angels and 13 games behind the division leaders out of Houston and Seattle. Worse yet, they’re 16.5 games out of a wild card in a top-heavy American League. Even when they sat a reasonable 13-17 at the end of April, contention was too lofty an aspiration for this group.

Especially on the bump.

If we wanted to look at the origin of their overall record, it likely lies with the pitching. Despite all-world heat out of closer Mason Miller, getting to him has been a problem. Their staff ranks 23rd in ERA (4.40), 28th in K% (19.9), and features the eighth-highest BB% (8.8). When you isolate that to the starting pitching, it ends up worse.

You can’t compete without pitching. And the output that the Oakland Athletics have delivered in that facet aligns with the very likes of Colorado, Miami, and the White Sox. The very teams I’m positing the A’s are not.

Worse yet, the A’s are a bottom-tier defensive squad. FanGraphs pegs them for a Fielding Run Value of -33. Only the White Sox feature a worse mark. Nobody features a worse Outs Above Average than Oakland’s -30, and their -27 Defensive Runs Saved sits third-worst.

No pitching, no defense. Right now, you’re reading this and saying “Randy, it would seem the Oakland Athletics are exactly like those other teams living in the abyss of the standings.” Or something along those lines. But this isn’t a pitching and defense column. It’s a hitting column.

 

What the Oakland Athletics Are Not

 

No, the A’s aren’t too adept at throwing or catching a baseball. But their shortcomings in each of those components belies the fact that the Oakland Athletics are a quietly solid offensive ballclub.

The run differential overshadows this a bit. When you see that -66, your first inclination is to think that this team can’t score or prevent runs. But that’s heavily skewed toward the ones they’ve allowed. Only two AL squads have allowed more runs than Oakland’s 486, and only three teams overall. Which means that, right off the bat, this offense never stood a chance.

But while they’ve been among the worst at preventing them, let’s note some teams they’re ahead of in the runs-scoring game. Toronto. Tampa Bay. St. Louis. Pittsburgh. Atlanta. The former two were supposed to be in playoff contention; the latter three actually are. In fact, Oakland’s 420 runs almost match Texas’ 426 and the Chicago Cubs‘ 422. The Rangers are the defending champions, and the Cubs were considered a favorite for their division.

The A’s wouldn’t be considered a “legitimate” team in the broader context of “competitive.” But, as it would turn out, they can hang offensively with a number of teams that were considered to be so at the season’s outset. So they’re not to be dismissed in the way that we might do with the Rox or the Sox.

 

The Anonymous Oakland Athletics

 

Perhaps the biggest factor contributing to our association with the A’s among the league’s worst teams is their anonymity. The White Sox have notable players. Colorado, too. Established vets or a small core of up-and-coming guys. The indifference of Oakland ownership toward their product has led to an absence of name recognition on the part of the mainstream. Which, in turn, leads to our associating them with those other squads.

In a cumulative sense, the Oakland Athletics are not remotely a bad offensive team. Actually, they’re quite middle-tier in most respects. FanGraphs has them at a wRC+ of 101. Not only is that 14th in the league, but it’s technically above average. That indicates that they’re at least doing something right.

The A’s also rank fourth in home runs (127) and 10th in team isolated slugging (.163). They walk at the league’s 12th-highest clip (8.5). Their HardHit% (39.5) also sits 12th. Their Barrel% sits even higher, with a 9.4 percent mark representing the league’s fifth-highest rate.

Within all that are a handful of quiet standouts. The A’s have five players with at least 200 plate appearances that sit north of the 100 wRC+ threshold: Brent Rooker (165), Max Schuemann (117), JJ Bleday (117), Lawrence Butler (117), and Miguel Andujar (115).

Rooker is the established bat. He broke out last year and has improved in just about every statistical category here in ’24. Bleday is a post-hype sleeper and Andujar is on his second change of scenery. Butler has worked his way up the system since 2018 and has torched the baseball since the start of July.

Of those five players mentioned, Rooker, Bleday, and Butler each feature an ISO at or over .200. So too does Shea Langeliers, whose .223 ISO trails only Rooker’s .281 mark. There’s power here. But there’s speed, too. Schuemann contributes with on-base (.355) and steals (9). Zack Gelof has a dozen steals of his own. Even Butler’s added six across 68 games.

It’s a genuinely fascinating group of offensive players. Late bloomers. Change-of-scenery types. Young guys cracking the top level for the first time. And they’re performing in the most exciting facets of the game, power and speed. It’s left the A’s a cut above the other teams we automatically dismiss in matters of relevance.

 

The Actually Interesting Oakland Athletics

 

There are reasons the Oakland offense can’t compensate for their shortcomings on the bump and in the field. For one, they whiff a lot. A SwStr% of 12.5 is fourth worst in the league. That feeds into a 25.6 K% that trails only Seattle as the league’s worst. As a result, they’re not putting enough balls in play. Their 73.6 Contact% is ahead of only Colorado.

It’s an oversimplification, but those elements are direct contributors to the AVG & OBP outputs. A .230 cumulative average is ahead of only the White Sox and Mariners, while their .301 OBP ranks 25th in baseball. They just don’t generate enough traffic for the power and speed scattered throughout their roster to matter.

That shouldn’t overshadow the important takeaway here. I’m not positing that Oakland is some sort of secret contender. Instead, the aim is to showcase just how interesting this team actually is while also separating them from the legitimately bad teams around the game. Because that is genuinely the case with Oakland.

As a fan, you want your team to be successful. There’s a massive digression here RE: what fans want when you’re talking about the Oakland context, but I will save that for another time (and probably platform). In the most general of senses, though, fans want to see wins. If you’re not seeing wins, you want to see intrigue. The A’s at least have that.

I don’t know what the long-term outlook is for this group. Rooker may not be long for this roster. Andujar either. And the younger names’ longevity depends on their proximity to arbitration. But in the interim, power and speed are what you want to watch from the fan perspective.

Loud contact and excitement on the bases can compensate for a lot. Not only are the A’s doing that at a respectable level, but it’s well into the realm of the legitimate offenses in baseball. Their counterparts at the bottom of the standings can’t say that.