Happy Friday, Athletics Nation!
Apologies for the brief…service outage earlier this week. I’m happy to be back to delivering Rumblings on my customary thrice-weekly basis. My experience so far is that the site is loading faster and running more smoothly than before, with fewer unsightly ads. That’s a good change.
Despite some significant injuries, the A’s are looking improved so far since the All-Star break: they are 10-9 so far this second half despite losing five of their first six after the Midsummer Classic. Since that first week of struggles, the A’s have swept a four-game series in Houston and won nine of 13. This week’s series win in Washington D.C. marks the A’s second consecutive road series victory, and starting today the team will be bidding for a third against the Orioles in Baltimore.
In order to complete this trifecta, the A’s will need to see improvements from J.T. Ginn and Jack Perkins, who have recently been called upon to fill in the back end of the starting rotation and are scheduled to pitch the first two games of the series at Camden Yards. Both pitchers struggled in their latest starts.
Ginn could be seen thrashing about angrily in the dugout after getting knocked out in the fifth inning against the Diamondbacks last Saturday. He allowed four runs and issued five walks in 4 1/3 innings. But Ginn’s prior two starts on the road in Texas were strong, so there is cause for hope in his case as well as Perkins’s. Jack allowed four runs and three walks in just three innings on Sunday, but he also struck out four and pitched to a 3.44 FIP in the contest, suggesting he may have had some bad luck to go with the jitters that one must suspect were also a factor in the 25-year-old righty’s first career MLB start.
The more established rotation arms have been looking good lately, especially Jeffrey Springs and Jacob Lopez, who have been positively brilliant. At the top of the rotation, Luis Severino has been less impressive overall, but he is riding on four consecutive wins and leads all A’s pitchers with 2.1 fWAR. That’s exactly how many wins above replacement Sevy logged last year with the Mets in 31 starts; he’s done it in 24 so far this season with the A’s. So one could argue that he’s delivered roughly as expected thus far despite his disappointing 4.82 ERA on the season. Luis is slated to start the third and final game of the Baltimore series.
All things considered, the A’s rotation is showing great promise compared to earlier in the season. Have a wonderful weekend, AN.
Kurtz: Number 2 with a bullet.
Meet your dinger-dependent Athletics.
De Vries off to a decent start in Lansing.
Lopez won this epic battle.