Welcome back to the Oakland Futility Watch, where we look at the lowly Athletics and their pursuit of the worst regular-season performance in MLB history. The A’s started last week with an 11-10 win in extra innings on Monday—and finished the week with a 5-4 victory on Sunday. That may be as good as it gets for Oakland this season, as the team has yet to win a series in 2023. It’s hard to envision a team that has been outscored by 117 runs already winning anything soon.

Here are some fun stats to chew on:

  • Oakland is 3-12 at home and 3-11 on the road. They’ve been outscored by 59 runs at home and by 58 on the road.
  • The A’s were 1-0 in March this year, and that certainly will be their only “winning” month of the season.
  • Oakland is 1-3 in extra innings, for a better winning percentage than the record in regulation games (5-20).
  • Oddly, the A’s are 5-6 in one-run games, meaning they have only one victory by more than one run.
  • The team is 0-9 in games decided by five or more runs.
  • Oakland is 1-8 in interleague games this season.
  • The only club to lose to the A’s twice already this year is the Los Angeles Angels.
  • Oakland has not won consecutive games yet this season, and its worst losing streak has been 7 games so far.
  • The A’s have been shutout 4 times already, without returning the favor to an opponent even once yet.
  • Oakland has two walkoff victories this year and only one walk-off defeat.
  • The offense has a team batting average of .229 and a team OPS of .686 so far this season.
  • The pitching staff has an ERA of 7.72 this year, currently.

We will look at these numbers again as the season progresses more, as it is still too early to project over the full 162-game season, but suffice it to say, the A’s are on pace to win just 33.5 games in 2023. The worst record in the 162-game era was posted by the 2003 Detroit Tigers, who went 43-119. The Oakland Futility Watch is on!