The weekly Oakland Futility Watch has reached the All-Star Game break, and it’s a “joy” to see the Oakland Athletics improving—for the most part. They started out July with three wins in four games, but now the A’s are riding another losing streak (L4) that didn’t have to be. Overall, Oakland is 25-67 right now, on pace for 44 wins in a season where the off-the-field drama has been high—and the on-the-field product mediocre.

We want to talk about Sunday’s game in Boston, and we warn you: we are beating a dead horse here. The A’s were tied at 3 runs apiece with the Red Sox in the top of the seventh inning, and Oakland got the first two men on base. So, with runners on first and second with no one out in a late-inning tie game, what happens? The Athletics blew it, of course: this has been an issue all season as we harp on Manager Mark Kotsay.

Former No. 1 pick JJ Bleday had the next AB, hitting fifth in the order with his crap .681 OPS. He hit a ground ball up the middle which forced the runner on first, so Oakland now had first and third with one out—and someone named Cody Thomas coming to the plate. Kotsay pulled Thomas for a pinch hitter, inserting second baseman Jordan Diaz for this key AB. That’s what the manager decided was best.

WTF?

We don’t have an issue pinch hitting for Thomas: in two games this year, he has had just 7 MLB ABs. But Diaz was the best you could do, Kotsay? He’s an age-32 journeyman with a little pop, but come on. If Kotsay thought this guy, with his 3 walks and 20 strikeouts in just 94 ABs this season was the answer, he was sorely mistaken. Guess what? Diaz struck out (and later made the last out of the game, too, in the top of the ninth).

So, then it came down to age-36 catcher Manny Piña, he of the whopping four games and 11 ABs in 2023. He also struck out, and that ended the inning, with the A’s not scoring after having a prime chance to take the lead in a getaway game before the All-Star break. Oakland pitching would give up the go-ahead, game-winning run in the bottom of the eighth inning, and that was the ball game.

Here’s the real fucked-up shit, though: Kotsay then replaced Piña in the bottom of the seventh defensively with rookie starting catcher Shea Langeliers. If you’re going to take a shitty veteran out anyway in the next half inning, why not pinch hit for him with a building block of your future in Langeliers? This makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Both catchers are righties, so there was no matchup advantage to be had. Brain fart?!

Kotsay just wasted an AB on a washed-up veteran who can’t hit instead of giving a rookie a chance to do something and learn from it, fail or succeed. Now, Piña has no walks this season, and while Langeliers has just 19 walks, at least he has a chance to get better. The veteran has nothing to offer in that situation at all to a 25-win team looking for a spark. Nothing. And that’s Kotsay for you, in a nutshell. He is not a good leader.

Heck, Kotsay could have had Langeliers hit for Thomas and still gotten Piña to the plate, if that’s what he wanted. Sure, the A’s don’t have great talent on their bench waiting to pinch hit in key moments on the road, but still … there is just no logic that justifies Kotsay’s decision making here, and it may have cost Oakland another win—which are hard to come by in 2023, in case he hadn’t noticed from his comfy front-row seat.

So, the Athletics are somehow 15-18 in one-run ballgames, which suggests Kotsay isn’t that bad in coaxing the optimal results out of his dismal roster. Oddly, too, the A’s are playing one game above their Pythagorean projection for the season, too, thanks to that terrible pitching. That also hints that maybe Kotsay is doing a “good job” with this roster. But we’ve noticed several games like this during the year.

These are games where the A’s fail in key situations, because the manager is making dumbass decisions. Kotsay is not maximizing the talent here that he has, and he’s not really helping the team win games that it has a chance to win—at least not as often enough as it could be. Yes, we know Oakland is getting better each month, based on winning percentage: .179 in April, .207 in May, .385 in June, and .375 in July so far.

We can’t explain it, either, other than the probability the players are learning on their own, because Kotsay is definitely mismanaging this team when we drill down to singular ABs in games that we actually are watching. If the team plans on winning by the time it makes it to Las Vegas in 2025, it would be in the A’s best interest to fire Kotsay and get a better manager. He’s not the answer at all, to anything here or now.

To wit: Kotsay’s playing career revealed him to be a below-average hitter (96 OPS+) and a barely decent fielder (career 2.7 dWAR in 17 seasons). Guys of this ilk often turn out to be good managers, because they had to maximize their brains as players to achieve anything of note. Kotsay is not one of those brainy guys, clearly, and we hate to knock Cal State Fullerton, but it’s not a college known for its academics, either.

Kotsay has to go before 2024; it’s that simple. The A’s will endure him for the final 70 games of this regular season, however, and that means the fans still have to suffer him for 2.5 more months. Woo-hoo …