Power Also Works

 

The Athletics started the season with a pretty incredible run from their starting pitchers. Luis Severino, Jeffrey Springs, J.P. Sears and Osvaldo Bido all gave up 2 or fewer earned runs in their first starts. It was a statistic that woke people up, and with Springs, Sears and Severino making a very strong front of the rotation, it meant that the A's could, for the first time in a while, be a balanced, close game team.

Well...Severino, Springs and Sears now all have ERAs over 4. So, uh...so much for that.

Obviously these guys aren't counted out as great starters this year. Sevvy has 21 Ks and a 0.6 WAR. Sears has a 1.176 WHIP. Bido has a 3 ERA. But any thought that this would be the year that they bring in starters to silence the opposition and small-ball their way to the wins is gone.

So now, the A's have gone to Plan B. Which is 'just smack the hell out of the ball.' And that's been doing them a little better.

Let's give a hand to Tyler Soderstrom, a guy who missed a lot of 2024 with injuries but was always expected to do great things [like Zach Gelof, who he was brought up with]. Right now he leads the MLB in home runs with 8. Last night he hit two against the White Sox, an outcome so obvious that I started him in fantasy over Paul Goldschmidt. The power hitting was always a possibility with Soderstrom, and now he's delivering, with 17 RBs and a .328 average. With Brent Rooker off to a slower start this year, having Soderstrom as the all-firing power bat is a very good thing. 

The pieces have sort of come together with this lineup. Jacob Wilson is a very good contact bat, he's hitting .333 with 22 hits. Rooker and Langeliers have had great power numbers so far. Butler seems to have moved into the star position, which is awesome. Even the replacement guys like Andujar and Urias have been helping. There are admittedly some guys that haven't come into their own yet, like Max Muncy, who seems to be taking his sweet time. But there's more to this lineup than there's been since everybody left, and now it does seem feasible for this team to outhit a lot of people.

Now...this is still a very simple, uneducated strategy right now. We're not playing Cashball, we're not getting notes from opponents, we're just going with power, and that's enough to ensure the A's don't lose 100 games hopefully. I don't think the team has enough to truly compete, but the seeds are finally there, and Fisher finally seems to want to keep a lot of them around.

Coming Tomorrow- It's weird that a team that's been in rebuild mode for a couple years has multiple veterans from the 2016 season, and they're integral. Here's one of them.