Oakland Athletics: Winning the Division is Crucial

Aug 11, 2013; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Oakland Athletics pitcher Grant Balfour (50) celebrates their victory against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. The Athletics beat the Blue Jays 6-4. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

The MLB playoff race is beginning to heat up, and the Oakland Athletics are in the thick of it. The A’s are among the teams preparing for the final stretch of the excruciatingly long 162-game season. Teams on the cusp of the playoffs all want in, and they will be fighting to accomplish that goal.

When the MLB and the Players Union decided that TWO wildcard spots would be available for the 2012 season and beyond, the value of winning the wild card plummeted. At the same time, the value of winning the division skyrocketed. The goal for any MLB team in serious contention for the playoffs should be to win the division, not get in through the wild card. The A’s currently sit only one game behind the Texas Rangers in the AL West. A push to win the division is a must.

With a month and a half left in the regular season, the A’s have plenty of time to make a division-winning run. The key is to stay consistent, not to fall into a hole in the AL West in which a miracle run is the only way to keep the playoff goal alive. The pitching is there, at least in terms of consistency. It has been for the majority of the season.

Bartolo Colon is an All-Star. Jarrod Parker has a solid ERA and, with the exception of one start against the Angels, has been incredibly consistent in the past couple months. A.J. Griffin and Dan Straily very rarely have bad starts, and promising pitching prospect Sonny Gray has allowed two earned runs in ten innings this year. Add on of the best bullpens in the MLB and you have World Series caliber pitching.

The same beliefs of consistency cannot be said for the offense. A typical A’s game will have at least one of the batters chip in with a home run. Sixteen different players have homered for the A’s this season. Home runs, however, do not make a potent offense by themselves, unless a team is hitting many of them each game. The A’s, as virtually every other team in baseball, cannot do that. To become a complete and dangerous team, the Athletics must do what they have not been doing as of late: hit with runners in scoring position. The trouble is not getting people on base, the trouble is driving the runners in. They do not respond in clutch situations.

The A’s have two options to fix these issues and get their offense to live up to its potential. One is simply to get hot. Josh Reddick is doing it. Jed Lowrie and Josh Donaldson did it at the beginning of the year.

Last year’s San Francisco Giants taught us the power of getting hot in the playoffs. There is an issue with getting hot: it is not a conscious decision, it just happens. You can’t predict when or even if it will happen. You cannot count on it. The other option is to make the hitters better, more consistent.

Only Jed Lowrie, Eric Sogard and Josh Donaldson have been able to get hits consistently. In fact, they are the only everyday players hitting over .250. Alberto Callaspo has hit successfully in clutch situations in his short time with the A’s and has already led them to two wins. The rest of the batters have not found consistency hitting and cannot be counted on to hit in clutch moments.

There is still a chance, though, that the rest of the lineup will become more complete hitters. You must hit consistently in the first place to hit consistently with runners on base.

Yoenis Cespedes has remarkable power. Give him a fastball and he can consistently hit it a long way. Give him a slider in the dirt and he will swing and miss. This hole is holding him back from being an elite hitter. If, in the last month and a half of the season, the batters can plug holes like this in their hitting game, the A’s will win the division.

If not, a wild card spot is the best they can hope for.