Our weekly Oakland Futility Watch is running out of criticisms to explore, because it ends up being so repetitive. We have just three games to report on this week, thanks to the All-Star Game break, but of course, the Oakland Athletics lost all three of them, by a combined score of 20-15. Two of the losses were by one run, so the A’s record in close games has now dropped to 15-20 on the season—which isn’t that bad.

For a team with an overall mark of just 25-70, you’d expect the team to be a lot worse in close games. But the issue this really is right now: the pitching. The worst Oakland team on the mound, historically, remains the 1997 A’s, who gave up 946 runs in 162 games for a 5.48 ERA. This current team is on pace to give up 1,018 runs with its current 6.07 ERA. So, this is easily the worst pitching staff in the Oakland Athletics archives.

However, if we look at franchise history, the 1936 Philadelphia A’s (1,045 runs and a 6.08 ERA) and the 1939 Philadelphia A’s (1,022 runs and a 5.79 ERA) were comparably bad. That’s the company this current team is in, but it shouldn’t be this bad. There are multiple guys on this staff who have regressed since last year and should be pitching a lot better than they are right now—giving legitimacy to the mental aspect of the sport:

  • Ken Waldichuk: his walk rate has more than doubled this year, from 2.6/9 to 5.5/9
  • James Kaprelian: combined 4.16 ERA over 253-plus innings in 2020-21, now at a 6.34 ERA in 2023
  • Paul Blackburn: a 4.28 ERA and 1.257 WHIP in 2022, now posting 4.86 ERA and 1.541 WHIP in 2023
  • Kyle Muller: a 4.17 ERA and 1.255 WHIP in 2021, now posting 7.79 ERA and 1.962 WHIP in 2023

Certainly, the organization expected all these guys to improve on past performance this year, but it just has not happened. That’s on the coaching staff, yet the A’s also didn’t expect phenom prospect Mason Miller to end up on the disabled list, either. He only pitched 21 1/3 innings this year before crapping out with a UCL injury. Oh, and Japanese import Shintaro Fujinami? His 8.75 ERA and 1.676 WHIP are way beyond belief.

This is a guy who posted a 3.41 ERA and a 1.353 WHIP in 10 seasons with Japanese professional teams! Did he suddenly forget how to pitch? We’ve suggested all the staff has suffered from stress in the sense of trying to be perfect to compensate for a bad offense, but … the offense isn’t that bad, in fact. The 1978 A’s were the worst-scoring team in Oakland history, managing just 532 runs in the season for a 3.28 per-game average.

The 2023 team is certainly challenged, yet it’s scored 344 runs in 95 games (3.62 rpg). So, it could be a lot worse. The pitching is just atrocious, though, due to bad coaching and odd regressions from the top six pitchers the team was expecting to rely on heavily in the rotation. It’s an anomaly, really, so we expect the team to get better as the season winds down, but with only 67 games left, is that even possible any more?

As usual, we will be on the scene for a home game later this week against the cheatin‘ Boston Red Sox, so it will be another chance for us to do some “live” reporting on the disaster currently happening in the pitcher-friendly confines of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.