The A's Have Five Hitters on the IL and deGrom Just Made the Leftovers Look Like a Rehab Start
Three hits all night, seven of those innings against Jacob deGrom, a fourth straight loss, and the five best bats in the organization all watching it in street clothes.
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Athletics | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| Texas | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | X | 8 | 9 | 0 |
Jacob deGrom threw seven innings and gave up one hit. Eight strikeouts, and I don't think the A's got a runner to second base against him all night. Rangers 8, A's 1, fourth loss in a row.
One hit.
The score isn't even the part that bothers me, which tells you something about where this thing is.
It's who was in that lineup. Or really, who wasn't.
The five best bats in the organization are all on the injured list
Nick Kurtz is on the 60 day. He was hitting .256 with 21 homers, 69 driven in and an .879 OPS in 99 games, which is by a mile the best offensive season anybody in this organization is having, and he's been gone for weeks. Shea Langeliers is on the 10 day with 23 homers and an .829. Tyler Soderstrom is on the 10 day, 19 homers and an .810 across 109 games. Jacob Wilson, the guy who was the best defensive story in the American League for two months, is on the 60 day after 80 games. And Brent Rooker, who was supposed to be the middle of this whole order, has played 48 games all year and hit .200 in them.
That's five hitters and roughly eighty home runs of production sitting in a training room in Arlington while Darell Hernaiz and Tommy White try to get a bat on a deGrom slider.
I'm not making excuses for anybody. This team was going to be bad. It was bad last year and the year before, and the reason has more to do with a payroll decision made in a boardroom than with anything a hamstring did. But there's a difference between a rebuilding club losing 8 to 1 and a club with its entire identifiable core unavailable losing 8 to 1, and only one of those tells you anything about next year.
What actually happened
Gage Jump got knocked around. Four and a third, six hits, seven earned. He got through the first clean and then Texas came at him in waves. Elias Díaz drove one in on a groundout in the second and Cody Freeman singled in another. Brandon Nimmo singled home Corey Seager in the third. Justin Foscue hit his tenth into the left center gap in the fourth. The fifth is where it turned into a chore: Nimmo sacrifice fly, Jake Burger single, an Evan Carter force out, three more runs, and everybody in green started counting outs.
Chris Roycroft was terrific in relief, two and two thirds and one hit, which gets exactly zero attention in a seven run loss and probably shouldn't. José Suarez gave one back in the eighth.
The offense had three hits. Carlos Cortes scored in the ninth on a Hernaiz sacrifice fly, so nobody had to sit through a shutout on a Monday night, and that is about the nicest thing available.
Fifty three and eighty five, and the clock in the corner keeps running
They're 53 and 85, 16 and a half out, and this is the second season in West Sacramento. There's one more of these after this one. Then it's Las Vegas, and everything about this franchise that ever had anything to do with the Bay Area becomes a thing you tell people about instead of a thing you go to.
So I watch. I know how that sounds. My whole adult life this team has been either the smartest organization in baseball or the cheapest, sometimes both inside the same month, and I sat in the Coliseum in the cold for a lot of Julys that nobody remembers now. They play in a minor league park up the causeway and I still put the game on, because there are two seasons left in the calendar sense and about one and a half in the sense that matters.
What's actually worth watching right now: Zack Gelof has 14 homers in 87 games and looks like a real major league hitter again. Henry Bolte is hitting .269 across 95 games as a rookie outfielder. Carlos Cortes has eight homers and a .258 average in a part time role. Those three plus a healthy Kurtz, Langeliers, Soderstrom and Wilson is a lineup.
Not a good one. A lineup, though, with names a person could learn.
Two more in Texas. deGrom is done with us for the week, which is the only genuinely encouraging fact I have.
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