A Rookie Named Melton Made the A's Look Like a Beer-League Team, 6-1

Nine strikeouts from a kid making his sixth big-league start. Six runs off Jeffrey Springs. One run of offense, and it came on an error. In Detroit on Wednesday, the homeless A's got exactly the afternoon their whole operation deserves.

I want you to sit with one number before we go anywhere else. Troy Melton, a rookie right-hander the vast majority of baseball has never heard of, walked into his own ballpark on Wednesday and struck out nine Athletics in five and a third innings without giving up a single earned run. Nine. From a kid who's 5-1 with a 1.82 ERA because he keeps getting to face lineups exactly like this one. Detroit beat the A's 6-1, and if you only glanced at the box score you'd think it was competitive. It wasn't. It was a big-league team taking batting practice against whatever it's Oakland, or Sacramento, or Las Vegas, or wherever this franchise pretends to live now, is putting on the field.

Jeffrey Springs got the ball for the A's, and Jeffrey Springs got hit. Four and a third innings, six hits, six earned runs, four walks. That isn't a start, that's a grease fire. He's 3-9 now with a 6.08 ERA, and I'm not even writing that to pile on the man, because none of this is really his fault. When your organization has spent years stripping the roster to the studs and shipping the franchise out of its own city, this is the pitching you end up trotting out on a Wednesday. Springs is just the guy standing on the mound when the bill comes due.

The damage was quick and it was cheap. Jake Rogers, a catcher hitting at the bottom of the Detroit order, took Springs deep for a two-run shot in the second. Then in the fifth, Spencer Torkelson unloaded a three-run homer to left, and that was the ballgame, 6-0, before the A's had done anything at all. Two swings, five runs. That's what happens when you can't miss bats and you can't keep the ball in the yard. The Tigers didn't need to work for this. They just waited for a mistake and Springs kept handing them one.

And the offense? There was no offense. One run, in the fourth inning, and I want to be precise about how it scored because it tells you everything: Tyler Soderstrom came around on a Detroit throwing error. Not a rally. Not a clutch two-out knock. A misfired throw by the other team. That was the single most productive thing the Athletics did with a bat all afternoon. J. Kuroda-Grauer went 3-for-4 and deserves a mention for at least looking like a professional hitter, but three of the four A's hits belonging to one guy isn't a lineup, it's a solo act surrounded by outs. Melton struck out the side's worth of them and made it look like a Tuesday in July, because it was.

This is the part where a normal recap talks about "positives" and "building blocks," and I'm not going to insult you with it. The A's are 41-51. They're five and a half games out in the AL West and sinking, and they're doing it in front of nobody, in a borrowed Triple-A park, because ownership decided a century of Oakland baseball was worth less than a Las Vegas fantasy that still isn't built. Wednesday's loss didn't happen in a vacuum. It's the natural end product of a plan that was never about winning baseball games. You can't gut a franchise, ship it out of its own city, and then act surprised when a rookie you've never heard of carves it up 6-1.

Meanwhile Detroit just won its fourth in a row and didn't break a sweat. Good for them. They have a real team, a real ballpark, and real fans who got to watch a young pitcher take a step forward at the A's expense. That's what functional organizations look like, and the contrast couldn't have been more brutal if someone had planned it. The Tigers are figuring out who they are. The A's are figuring out which city to lie to next.

So no, there's no silver lining here, and I refuse to manufacture one. Kuroda-Grauer had a nice day. Soderstrom scored on a gift. That's the entire highlight reel from a 6-1 loss in which a rookie struck out nine and your starter couldn't survive the fifth. This is what this franchise is now: a road show that exists to fill the other team's highlight package. Wednesday in Detroit wasn't rock bottom. With the A's, there's no such thing as bottom anymore. There's only the next city, and the next 6-1.

More coverage: A's section · Bay Area MLB · Columns · Bay Area Sports Blog home