The Oakland A’s are playing terrible baseball to open the 2021 campaign; it’s so bad, that I’ve had trouble selecting just one eye-popping statistic that accurately describes the carnage.
So here are two: First of all, the A’s pitching staff has allowed eight or more runs in its first five games, all losses, of course. That’s only been done three times in the last 100-plus season’s, per the San Francisco Chronicle’s Matt Kawahara.
Yikes. That explains why manager Bob Melvin needed a position player to pitch late in its season-opening series against against Houston. The pitching staff was simply beaten up.
But there’s more. Per Kawahara, no team in Oakland Athletics history has started 0-6. The A’s are currently 0-5 and face the Dodgers’ No. 1 pitcher and three-time Cy Young Award winner, Clayton Kershaw, on Tuesday.
The A’s are 0-5 for the first time since 1987. They have not started a season with six straight losses in the Oakland era.
Matt Kawahara/San Francisco Chronicle
The A’s will turn to opening-day starter Chris Bassitt to stop the historically-bad start from becoming the worse ever. It won’t get easier for the A’s after facing the World-Series champion Dodgers, either. They’ll face the Astros again during their next series.
No time to think about that just yet, however. Oakland needs a win like it never has before on Tuesday.
Sad to say, but it all might ride on Bassitt’s shoulders; the entire club looks lost at this point. But this is baseball, not football, of course, and there are plenty of games to turn it around. Tuesday would be a fantastic time to start that process.
(Photo credit: Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports)
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