But the thing about close losses is that you have do some good things along the way in order to keep them close. The A’s left Oracle Park with a 1-2 record, but they did win the run differential battle with an 11-10 margin, and when the opposite is true it’s always used as a criticism so it must now count as at least some consolation. Furthermore, some individual players really stepped up. Here are three bright sides amid the series loss.
Starting rotation was great
While the games didn’t always finish the way Oakland wanted, they tended to start well on the pitching side. The rotation delivered three strong starts, ranging from good enough to absolute gem, each time more than keeping the team in the game.
Good
morning afternoon, Athletics Nation!
We’re nearly done voting on our annual Community Prospect List, in which we crowdsource the Top 30 prospects in the Oakland A’s farm system. The current ballot today is for the 28th spot.
It was already known that no A’s players cracked Pipeline’s national Top 100 list, but
someone had to finish at the top of Oakland’s system. It turned out to be teenage catcher
Tyler Soderstrom, last summer’s 1st-round draft pick. We put him second on our CPL behind lefty pitcher
A.J. Puk, while Pipeline swapped the two, with various other mainstream sources landing on each side of that debate Baseball Prospectus and Keith Law chose Puk, while Baseball America went with Soderstrom.