Nobody in Oakland Can Throw

 

The cumulative WAR of the hitters of the Oakland Athletics is 4.0. Shohei Ohtani has exceeded that mark as a batter alone.

The cumulative WAR of the PITCHERS of the Oakland Athletics, though, is -1.9. Which means despite the positive totals that J.P. Sears, Hogan Harris, Paul Blackburn, Austin Pruitt and Trevor May are working with this year, totaling 6.0 ironically, the amount Ohtani has just from hitting, the rest of the pitching staff have enough negative figures to drag the team's cumulative pitching WAR backwards despite all that. This is the degree of terrible pitching we're dealing with here. Say what you will about the team's terrible hitting, but at least they're still working with a positive integer.

And, again, what makes the terrible pitching so heartbreaking is that this is a team with actual good pitchers on it. J.P. Sears is having one of the only good seasons in Oakland, with a 1.220 WHIP despite losing 11 games. Trevor May has 15 saves and has finally achieved success as a closing option rather than just as a relief option. Pruitt and Harris, while injured, were still two successful starting options for this team and made things a ton easier. Even Dany Jimenez and Sean Newcomb have had some success in recent weeks. But so many other people are just terrible, not just in the inexperience of being on a bad team, but also in the way that many of these players were cooked up in much better systems.

Two of the worst statistical pitching performances of the year for the A's came from teams that have highly-regarded organizational depth. Kyle Muller, netted in the Sean Murphy deal, was finally given a chance to start and it went atrociously: he currently has a 7.67 ERA and a 1-5 record, which is odd when you remember that he was actually pretty decent with the Braves. Lucas Erceg was a Brewers farmhand who was picked up midseason, and he's been one of the team's most popular bullpen choices. Unfortunately, Erceg has a 5.82 ERA and a 1.685 WHIP. You also have Drew Rucinski, who spent the last few years in Korea, came back and signed with Oakland, was up for 4 games and went 0-4 with a 9.00 ERA. Ultimately there was an arm issue, but man did it not take long at all for the US throwing regiment to screw him up.

Next year, obviously, the A's are gonna need to improve. With all these rookies that are up and beginning to look like sure bets for the future [Ruiz, Butler, Gelof], they need as many of those on the pitching side as well. I don't know how ready their pitching prospects are, or if it'll go any better than some of the young pitchers they've thrown out there this year, but there has to be something under the surface, right? Joey Estes and Joe Boyle seem like their surest bets, but how far away are they? And will it be even harder for them to make an impact by the time they get here?

I hope there's a way of improving the pitching situation from how it is now, because it's currently pretty dire. And unless the A's have a ton of greats coming up the pipe, it has the potential to stay that way.

Coming Tonight: A team legend in the last year of his contract, looking down the barrel of aging.