![\"\"](\"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/oakland_athletics.png\")
By Tim Byrnes<\/p>\nBy Tim Byrnes<\/p>\n
Let us take a second to recognize where the A’s are today. Enjoy the view for a second, shall we?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The A’s just won their second series in a week versus the division-leading Texas Rangers and three series in a row, including four of the last five, starting with a sweep of the Chicago White Sox.<\/p>\n Standing with a 17-15 record and considering their schedule, this is a great start to the season.<\/p>\n Seven of the ten series the A’s have had so far have been against division leaders and teams over .500.<\/p>\n The A’s have played more ‘away’ games than games in West Sacramento and sport the best road record in MLB at 11-6.<\/p>\n For the Athletics, known for slow starts and good second-halves, two games over .500 on May 2 should be celebrated.<\/p>\n One issue I see the A’s continuing to experience is that they seem to have a blowout loss in nearly every series. Losses of 18-3, 10-2, 12-5, 14-1, 10-3, and 15-2 have overshadowed the positive strides of this pitching staff.<\/p>\n The team is developing a pattern of winning series finales after losing the first five rubber matches of the year.<\/p>\n Since then, the Athletics have won four of the last five series finales.<\/p>\n Athletics Batting:<\/strong> Jacob Wilson has hits in 25 of 29 games this season, going 5-for-13 in Texas, and at .331 maintains a top batting average in the AL.<\/p>\n Shea Langeliers broke out of his slump by hitting 5-for-11 with a home run in the series. At the same time, rookie Nick Kurtz has hit safely in six of his seven games since being called up.<\/p>\n A good problem is “What do we do with Miguel Andujar?” His bat in Spring Training cost Seth Brown his job, and he is currently hitting a robust .325. Kurtz’s call-up resulted in the juggling of players, and Andujar has seen a drop in usage. However, he keeps having multi-hit games, and manager Mark Kotsay has to find ways to keep his bat in the lineup.<\/p>\n Lawrence Butler is in a funk! Despite his ninth-inning grand slam Wednesday, he’s having difficulty finding the ball. In the last two series, he has struck out 15 times in 27 at-bats.<\/p>\n Athletics Pitching:<\/strong> Jeffrey Springs needed only 68 pitches in the finale in Texas to go a full six innings of two-hit, scoreless ball and hand the Rangers their fourth shutout of the year.<\/p>\n Middle relievers starting to stick out include Tyler Ferguson’s minuscule .061 era and Justin Sterner’s workhorse 15.2 innings of scoreless ball.<\/p>\n Grant Holman has won three of the four games he has pitched in and has yet to allow a run, while closer Mason Miller notched his 10th save of the year.<\/p>\n Miller has upped his velocity considerably by hitting between 100-103mph on his 4-seam fastball 11 times in his two innings of work in Texas.<\/p>\n Upcoming Series:<\/strong> Both teams post similar hitting statistics, with the A’s hitting .254 to the Marlins .255. The Athletics have shown more power ball by having a 41 to 27 edge in home runs.<\/p>\n In a rare occurrence, Miami(12-18) comes in with a worse Team ERA than the A’s, with an obscene 5.89 to 4.60 ratio.<\/p>\n The Marlins have lost five in a row and have given up a whopping 55 runs in those five games.<\/p>\n Gametime:<\/strong> By Tim Byrnes Let us take a second to recognize where the A’s are today. Enjoy the view for a second, shall we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11059],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89914,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89913\/revisions\/89914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAs a team, the A’s continue to be among American League leaders in many offensive categories, including second in batting average and third in home runs.<\/p>\n
\nStarting pitchers continue to pitch well of late, allowing only five runs in the four-game series.<\/p>\n
\nThe Athletics travel to Miami for a three-game series against the struggling Marlins.<\/p>\n
\nFriday: May 2, 4:10pm
\nLoanDepot Park
\nAthletics RHP Osvaldo Bido(2-2, 4.31) versus Marlins RHP Max Meyer(2-3, 3.18)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"