The Oakland Athletics were embarrassingly bad last year, pretty much by design. Their 112 losses were the most in baseball and the most by the franchise in a century. It was a roster full of players that would make a Triple-A club blush. They couldn’t hit, they couldn’t pitch, they couldn’t win.
This year, the A’s aren’t good necessarily, but they’re not god-awful either. Their 19 wins are already 38 percent of their win total from a year ago. They revamped their bullpen and it has gone from worst to one of the best. They still have one of the worst offenses and worst pitching staffs overall, and they’ve dropped 10 out of their last 12, so perhaps we are starting to see their true talent level.