Best A's Of Our Lives

So. Here's where we're at:

-Khris Davis is gonna top 40 home runs for the third year in a row. He's also leading the AL in homers right now, in a league where J.D. Martinez and Giancarlo Stanton are also in his league.

-Edwin Jackson is having his single best season as a starter since 2011, and completely defying any odds that he would be more than a shitty little fifth starter.

-Jed Lowrie, Matt Chapman and Matt Olsen have 20+ home runs. Only Marcus Semien doesn't have 20 in this infield, but he's still hitting really well. So the entire infield is dangerous.

-The outfield of Stephen Piscotty, Chad Pinder and Mark Canha is one of the most deceptively efficient outfields of the season. You wouldn't think it'd work, but all three are hitting, and all three are pretty quick out there.

-Ramon Laureano will be the A's outfielder of the future, and if him just getting licks in now is dangerous enough, watch him as a starter next year.

-Frankie Montas, Mike Fiers, Jeurys Familia and Fernando Rodney are proof that whoever succeeded Billy Beane as GM (David Forst) is just as genius as his predecessor.

-You wouldn't think that Trevor Cahill would essentially be the ace of this rotation in Sean Manaea's absence, but he's doing a nice enough job. Also, I had no idea he was only 30.

-You also wouldn't think that Blake Treinen, post-Nats trade, would be coming off as one of the more dominant closers in the AL, especially in a bullpen with two major closers, Familia and Rodney, backing him up. And yet here we are.

The A's have surprised everyone, and that's solely because we all underestimated them. We saw a picture in April, and we thought that this was all there was to it. And the team grew, and battled, and stocked up, and now are chasing the Astros and Yankees for October glory. And unlike the 2011 squad...'underdog' might be an incorrect distinction for the A's.

This is a powerful team. And they may only get stronger as September goes on.

Coming Tonight: Speaking of major come-ups, the Rockies are back in the race, and here's one of their premier strikeout artists.