The West Sacramento Athletics are the last winless team in baseball, which is not much of an accomplishment in and of itself. Someone is always the last winless team in baseball, going all the way back to the beginning of baseball and for that matter, winning in general. All you have to do is not win, and eventually even the last winless team will screw that up.
But it's the way that the A's are not winning that stands out, a frenzy of aerobic exercise centered around swinging a baseball bat but without the associated achievement of striking a thrown ball with it, and capped by a short brisk plod back to the dugout. They lost their fourth consecutive game last night in Atlanta, 4-0, and were better at hitting the ball than they have been in any other game, which is mostly to say they were poorer at missing it.
The A's have sent 145 batsman plateward so far this year, and 57 have walked back to the dugout moments later without having put the ball in play. This is the worst start for contact in the measured history of the sport, which is to say since 1898; that includes the Cleveland Spiders, which settles that argument for good. The A's struck out 16 times in their opener in Toronto, 19 times the next day, and 15 the day after that. On Monday in Atlanta, that figure was only seven, which leads us to believe that manager Mark Kotsay mentioned their little bit of history to his team at least in passing. Too bad on that last one, too, because they'd been on a pace to strike out 2,700 times, breaking the old record by 1,046. Now their projected figure is only 2,308.
Indeed, if you extend West Sacramento the highly questionable status of "part of the Greater Bay Area," the A's and Giants would be the two worst hitting teams in baseball, and the Giants have already had former pitcher Mike LaCoss call their flagship radio station to rip the team. But San Francisco laid one on San Diego last night, slaughtering the Padres 3-2, and so their early struggles are just a momentary blip on the radar, at least until Tim Lincecum or John Burkett phones in to speak their mind.
But the A's were an impish team of underpraised sluggers last year, albeit one playing their home games in a hitter-friendly minor league park. They weren't the Yankees or Dodgers power-wise, but they were also spending one-fourth as much money , and came much closer to the top of the league in homers with that level of spending than anyone anticipated. Nick Kurtz, Brent Rooker, Shea Langeliers, and Tyler Soderstrom all hit at least 25 homers, and seemed good bets to do so again; it didn't always feel like they were assembling The Next Big Thing, but they were clearly moving towards something.
We mention all this to suggest that such results might have made the fellas a bit giddy as regards plate discipline. When you average two strikeouts per inning, you're either going to win the Cy Young or lose a lot; the White Sox struck out 20 times on Opening Day, so it's not like the A's are cornering the market on generating suction.
But the lineup making like a wind farm in the early going also makes for also an homage to the Moneyball A's, who were among the industry leaders in diminishing the shame attached to striking out. The math associated with this truism has guided a full generation of general managers to ignore not hitting the ball as a matter of team failure. It also helped turn Billy Beane into Brad Pitt, if that's your idea of fun.
Still, there is a limit even to this absolutism, and wit this ratio between strikeouts and every other offensive outcome, well, you're going to end up being the Rockies. That it's the A's doing all this instead is interesting because as we said, their lineup is relatively well regarded, certainly in the Bizarro World where fantasy players roam in search of cheap dingers but also in the industry as a whole.
And in truth, strikeouts are Having A Moment so far this season. Cal Raleigh, last year's MVP runner-up, has struck out 11 times in 17 at-bats so far this year, reminding people that he was awful for two months last year and indomitable for the other four. If this is just an opening week anomaly, fine, but we suspect these A's are both emotionally and practically capable of obliterating a multitude of strikeout marks this season and still hitting 250 homers. How that translates into victories is very much an open question, but if you like "on a pace for" tomfoolery, they are currently averaging an infinite number of strikeouts per win. How that's work for your fantasy team?
