For a few years, 2015-2018 to be exact, I was convinced that the Oakland A’s had digressed to the MLB’s farm system. It honestly felt like any player that was worth anything was traded for pennies on the dollar. Since 2018, the A’s have not only been one of the best teams in the MLB but arguably the class of baseball behind the Dodgers. The Oakland A’s have made the playoffs each of the past 3 seasons. Moreover, the A’s have looked like one of the best teams in baseball.
The team just won 13 games in a row, with the streak being snapped in Baltimore on Sunday. The A’s are back on top of the AL West and poised to win the division in consecutive season, yet again are under the radar in the baseball world. It seems like an annual occurrence, the A’s are good and are also a team that is hard to like. Being that this is the 4th season where the A’s are going to be good but not garner any interest from a fan like myself, it’s a good time to wonder why the A’s are a team that seems to be ignored by the baseball world.
An Invisible Team in an Invisible Stadium
It’s hard to ignore the stadium the team plays in. The Oakland Coliseum, even without the football transition, is a poor stadium for baseball. Even when the team is good, which they are, there is a unique fanbase that comes to the games. Like many small-market teams, the A’s have a tough time filling the stadium and selling their team. Oddly enough, Oakland is not a small market, with the Warriors playing next door and a populated city. The team should be able to attract fans, as a winning team. This is where how the team is built, with some reaction to the ballpark, becomes part of the issue.
The A’s don’t have a true identity. For the past few seasons, I can’t recall if the A’s are a pitching team, a power-hitting team, what they truly are excel at. They are good, analytically good to be exact, at everything that is required to win games. The problem that baseball fans are left with, is that the A’s become a boring team to watch if you ever tend to watch them. Watching the Oakland A’s, you see a team that gradually wins games and suddenly has a 5-run lead.
Speaking of watching, the A’s are a team you or any baseball fan probably don’t watch often, if at all. The West Coast games can be grueling to sit through, to begin with. A team like the A’s grind out games and win with elongated rallies that make it hard to sit through. Even when the Dodgers, Padres, or Angels play late games, they are hard to sit through. Simply put, the A’s are rarely on TV at a national time. The pitch to put them under the spotlight isn’t as clear either when the other West Coast teams have more “entertaining” rosters.
Moneyball Can Become Boring
The style of play in Oakland is boring but moreover how the A’s win games are just unappealing. Ramon Laureano is a great example of how the A’s are built. Laureano is a great fielder who gets on and around the bases with speed. Matt Chapman is a great third baseman, arguably the best in the league, but his fielding is his best attribute. To win games, especially in Oakland, you need great fielding, runners on base, and roster depth both in the lineup and in the pitching staff. The A’s have all those attributes but are frankly an unexciting team to watch.
Moreover, the team is built on analytics. A lot of teams are these days (if not all the teams) but for the A’s particularly, they have to find players ahead of the curve or with better specific stats that you might not have heard of or don’t care about (Jed Lowrie is a great fit in Oakland but not someone you would pay attention to). The payroll doesn’t help this situation either. With the A’s, like the Marlins and Rays, they are forced to trade expensive players or juggle a tight payroll. However, the Rays somehow became an exciting team, winning the American League Pennant last season and with a fun group of players.
Maybe it’s just an individual case? Maybe Randy Arozarena is just more exciting than Matt Chapman? But maybe the issue is that the A’s live by the Moneyball ideology. The A’s don’t pay star players and never will, not only because they can’t afford them. At least some small-market teams can to agreements with core players to keep them around. With the A’s, it’s hard to think about who the longest-tenured players on the team are, or even the face of the franchise over the previous decade. It’s hard to be excited about the games or the team, after all, who are you excited to watch?
What Have The Oakland A’s Proven?
The unfortunate reason the A’s are unnoticed and a team you hate to love are that they are in a hamster wheel of sorts. They are a team we can all acknowledge is good but are they great? The Oakland A’s last appeared in a World Series in 1990, since then, every American League team has reached the Fall Classic except for the Orioles, Mariners, and A’s. Moreover, the A’s are a team you can bet on to reach the postseason but not make it far after. Constantly, they win the division or make it to the Wild Card Game but are quickly eliminated. For all the praise and talk about being the Moneyball team, they sure don’t have much to show for it. This isn’t a small-market issue that is clipping the A’s. After all, many low payroll teams have reached and won the World Series in recent years.
Like many teams in sports, until they prove us wrong, we won’t believe in the A’s. They aren’t cursed but they are unproven in a way. The quick postseason exits have made them a hard team to embrace considering they aren’t a team to truly believe in. Like the Denver Nuggets in basketball or the Oregon Ducks in College Football, they aren’t going to be credited as a great team until they get over that hump. Until then the Oakland A’s will just remain invisible, unexciting, and unlikable.
