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MLB Team Outlook: Oakland Athletics

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MLB Team Outlook: Oakland Athletics
The Oakland Athletics are not having the best of times in Major League Baseball this season. They have failed consistently against strong oppositions this season and thus are positioned amongst the ten worst-performing teams on the circuit.
The Athletics are drawn in the American League West division and even though other teams in the division are not league-best, the Athletics themselves have failed to execute their plan this season. The A’s are at least 11 games behind second-placed Los Angeles
Angels and 14 games behind leaders Texas Rangers in a division which has just four teams. The Athletics are ahead of the struggling Seattle Mariners by at least three-games.
The A’s have failed to impress on the plate while their performance on the mound has been decent in comparison. The team is struggling with the 26th-best batting average in the Majors out of a total of 30 teams and the batters have failed to slug
big hits too. Their slugging percentage of .367 is ranked 25th in MLB.
Coco Crisp and Josh Willingham have been the notable contributors for Oakland are the only batters in the line-up to have more than 50 runs to their credit respectively. Crisp has amassed 63 runs amid 119 hits at a batting average of .274 while Willingham
has 52 runs to his credit thus far and his hits just eight shy of a hundred this season.
Willingham, however, has been more useful in producing runs for the Athletics. He has produced 74 RBIs in comparison to Crisp’s 43 and has a substantial lead over Crisp in smashing home-runs. Crisp has managed a perfect hit seven times this season while
Willingham has replicated the same 22 times till now.
David DeJesus has shown glimpses of genius in his at-bats but has not been able to convert opportunities into runs. He has 46 runs to his credit so far amid 85 hits in 366 at-bats for a batting average of .232 this season. The Athletics would want to develop
a strong and dependable line-up for their next campaign where they can be assured of a decent batting performance to support the bull-pen.
Gio Gonzalez has outperformed Trevor Cahill on the mound this season, even though neither of them has commendable statistics for applaud this season. Gonzalez has managed to win ten of his 25 starts thus far with 11 losses looming his record while Cahill
is struggling with 12 losses from 27 starts and just nine wins to compliment this record.
Gio’s earned-run average of 3.24 is still acceptable, given league standards, but Cahill needs to resurge sooner than later to revive his ERA from 4.17 this season to a decent figure next season, if not by the end of this season.
The Athletics have been decent in home games but have faltered badly in the road fixtures. Their 40 losses in 64 games on the road pictures their weakness to adapt to conditions quickly and they would want to work on this during the training period.
Ideally, Oakland would want to fortify their home fixtures and produce a decent performance on the road fixtures to have a respectable record on the whole. Their pitching has helped them stay above the Mariners this season but more needs to be done if an
improved performance is a desire for next season.
Note: Stats in this feature are as on August 24, 2011.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.

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