One Missed Coliseum

 

The A's are selling game-passes for like 30 home games for less than 100 dollars each. No one is coming to games, and even selling tickets at a ridiculously cheap price isn't doing it. But, honestly, even if you PAID ME 100 dollars to watch 30 A's home games, I still probably wouldn't do it. Around the 15th I'd start rooting for the away team. And then around the 21st I'd show up in a Golden Knights jersey.

Look, the best player on the A's right now is Brent Rooker, former Twins prospect who struggled with injuries with the Padres and Royals last year. Now that he's healthy and starting everyday, he's batting .320 with 22 RBIs and 9 home runs, and with a 1.2 WAR is the most crucial player on this team, ahead of Ramon Laureano, Zach Jackson and rookie Mason Miller. Even with signings like Jace Peterson, Shintaro Fujinami, Aledmys Diaz and Trevor May, the single most crucial addition to this team from another market was Brent Rooker. That alone is insane. I believe this is the part in this satire where Rooker trips over a butterfly and misses 6 months. 

All the...okay, real talk, I was gonna say 'all the homegrown prospects', but I was referring to Shea Langeliers, Esteury Ruiz, Kevin Smith, J.J. Bleday, J.P. Sears, Kyle Muller and Ken Waldichuk, and all of them were netted in trades. That's honestly a lot of the A's farm system right now, a lot of other people's prospects. Some of them, like Ruiz and Langeliers, are playing big parts in this team and impressing people, but several of them still just aren't performing at MLB standards. 

There are literally only three actual homegrown players coming up the natural way this season. Two of them are competing for the same infield position; Nick Allen is the more defensively inclined of the two, but Jordan Diaz might be the better all around player. And then there's Mason Miller, the hurler who nearly stunned the Mariners a few days ago and has been one of the few sure bets the A's have had thus far. And yes, there are some other top prospects who are actual A's prospects, like Tyler Soderstrom, who could help take this team over eventually, but even the minors are filled with people from other deals. The farm system abilities of this team aren't great on their own, and are subsisting off of other teams'. Which isn't a BAD strategy, but it's a telling one.

Ultimately, when both other people's prospects and your own prospects aren't enough to aid...whatever the hell is showing up in the lineup every day for the A's, it's a worse feeling. How do you fix something that keeps breaking and WILL BREAK even more times in the next few months? I get why A's fans are pissed, I wouldn't want to root for this kind of strategy either. 

I sincerely hope that, by the next time I talk about this team, they have reached double-digit wins. But this might be a tall order for them.

Coming Tomorrow- Former Pirates catcher signed as a steady option for a team that was supposed to be steadier than this.