MESA, Ariz. - From the get-go this season, the Oakland A’s pitching staff will have a little boost.
Dave Stewart, one of the great starters in franchise history, began a stretch of four days working with the A’s pitchers as a guest instructor, and manager Bob Melvin said he struggled just to list all of Stewart’s accomplishments.
“You look at his career and when I was introducing him, I was going to go through all the accolades and I said, ‘This might take an hour,’ ” Melvin said Wednesday at the Lew Wolff Training Complex. “ ‘Let’s just cut it back and say: probably as fierce a competitor as has ever been on the mound, certainly embraced being an Oakland Athletic and he was a World Series MVP and a Championship Series MVP twice - that tells you a lot about Dave Stewart.