Well, another Oakland A’s season is in the books, and another playoff failure. Looking back, this was supposed to be “the year” where Oakland had all of the possible talent in order to not only be the best team in the MLB, and win the whole thing. This team went from the best team in the league to out of the playoffs after finishing as the second team in the Wild Card play-in game. Popular opinion is saying that it was just one thing but there are always multiple angles to everything.

“The Trade”

Yoenis Cespedes for Jon Lester, does anything else need to said? Everybody claims that this was the sole reason for the A’s ultimate late-season collapse, but was it? Lester posted an ERA of 2.35 and a WHIP of 1.07 in just 11 starts with the A’s. Needless to say he did his job.

Now the trade could have had a different impact, causing players to maybe work harder to try and make up the lack of Cespedes’ offensive output, or team chemistry could have been messed up. It’s hard to gauge how well a team’s mental state is after a blockbuster trade. Major factor? Yes. The end all be all of how the season turned out? No.

Hitting with Runners in Scoring Position

Total average of .258 with RISP is not a terrible stat. But it did fall off during the second-half of the season. It was as if the team got nervous and either did not want to swing the bat or over-swung it in hopes that the ball would find a hole somewhere. Unfortunately, the ball just doesn’t roll the way you want it to sometimes.

Injuries

With a team that platoons players the way that the A’s do, running into injuries with multiple players at the same position is very difficult to deal with. Players who are also everyday starters makes life much more difficult. They lost starters Jarrod Parker and A.J. Griffin to Tommy John Surgery before the season even started. The new acquisition from the San Diego Padres in slugger Kyle Blanks would be lost to an ankle injury in June. Catcher John Jaso suffered another concussion. Shortly followed by outfielder Craig Gentry. Catcher Stephen Vogt suffered a foot injury.

Outfielder Coco Crisp had a nagging neck injury that was keeping him as a day-to-day for the remainder of the season. Closer Sean Doolittle was out for a few weeks with an injury to the upper-body. Catcher Derek Norris was also out for a bit with back spasms. Infielders Nick Punto and Jed Lowrie both suffered injuries with a strained hamstring and a fractured right finger respectively. Injuries like these especially to a lot of everyday players cause production to falter and put more pressure on the managers to shuffle lineups and on other players to perform to make up the difference.

Bullpen Struggles

Many times with or without struggling reliever Jim Johnson who was released in late July, the bullpen had a lot of difficulties trying to lock down games. Looking at a game in Chicago where the White Sox were down to their last strike with a one-run deficit with Eric O’Flaherty on the hill who gave up a game-tying home run to Tyler Flowers. Then, Jesse Chavez who was a starter at the beginning of the season gave up the eventual walk-off to Conor Gillaspie. The play-in game was much of the same. Even though Lester struggled in the later innings, the eventual tie and then loss ends up on the shoulders of the bullpen. When it goes from, “we have this game in the bag,” to, “oh no, here we go again,” saying there’s a problem is a gross understatement.

There are some other things like managerial decisions that contributed to the fall. But among all of the bad, there were some good things that came out this season. Having a good amount of all-stars and proving that this team can be resilient. Unfortunately when the chips were down on the table, their struggles got to them and now we go through another long dark winter and look towards next spring.