ANAHEIM – The assessment of his ballclub provided by Athletics manager Mark Kotsay ahead of Tuesday’s game was two-fold as the A's entered play with a record under .500 for the first time since April 10, yet they remained in sole possession of first place in the American League West for the 23rd consecutive day.
On one hand, the A’s have not taken advantage of what, so far, has been a weak division. On the other hand, they’ve remained atop the standings despite their offense performing well below its high expectations heading into 2026.
“I just think, as a team, we still have a lot of room for improvement, which is encouraging,” Kotsay said. “Especially on the offensive side, with a lineup that we know we have some guys in there that are battling.
“Our weighted on-base doesn’t match where we are with runs scored. We’re like 10th in weighted on-base average, and 20th in runs scored. That, to me, tells a sign that there’s some bad luck. There’s some balls that we haven’t taken advantage of with guys on base and getting that hit.”
The A’s found that big hit early, and often, on Tuesday night, racking up a season-high run total against the Angels in a 14-6 victory at Angel Stadium that showed exactly what this offense is able to do.
Five A’s hitters record at least two hits in the 15-hit onslaught that was just one shy of the club’s season-high. As opposed to Monday night’s frustrations with runners in scoring position in a heartbreaking loss, the A’s knocked in 12 of their runs with two outs on Tuesday, including all six runs of a third inning in which they batted around the order against Halos starter Reid Detmers, marking the most two-out runs scored in a game by any team in MLB this season.
“The offense was the story, really,” Kotsay said. “Offensively, we haven’t been putting at-bats together. To do what we did in the third inning with two outs and just continue to take good at-bats, hit after hit, that’s what the offense is capable of doing.”
Offensive consistency is the key for the A’s. They’ve had sporadic double-digit outputs like this throughout the season, but those have been coupled with collective lulls at the plate. Before Tuesday, the A’s had lost 10 of their last 16 games, averaging just 3.0 runs per game in those losses.
They’re not going to score 14 runs every single night, but days like this – highlighted by the trio of Brent Rooker, Zack Gelof and Nick Kurtz combining to go 8-for-14 with two homers, a double and 11 RBIs – are what the A’s believe can occur more frequently, which in turn could help increase their lead in the American League West, which remains slim at one game. Kurtz extended his on-base streak to 42 games, the longest active streak in the Majors and tied for the A's fourth-longest single-season mark (Mark McGwire owns the record at 48 games in 1996).
“We’re in first place, and we haven’t even come close to playing our best baseball yet,” Rooker said. “It’s exciting for us knowing what we’re capable of and knowing we haven’t really reached that ceiling yet, but what we’ve been doing so far has been good enough to be in first for a good little bit now. We’re excited to kind of hit our peak and start doing what we can do and seeing what happens from there.”
The A’s offense broke it open in the third, watched the lead shrink to 6-4 after the Angels scored three runs and knocked starter Jacob Lopez out of the game in the fourth, then made it a comfortable lead with eight runs over the final four innings.
In between all that scoring, though, was perhaps the biggest performance of the night courtesy of Justin Sterner. Entering in relief of Lopez with two outs and two on in the fourth, Sterner stranded runners at the corners with a flyout of Jorge Soler to prevent further damage and keep the lead at two runs.
From there, a bullpen that was rested, thanks to J.T. Ginn’s gem in a losing effort the night before, did its thing, with Jack Perkins, Scott Barlow, Hogan Harris and Joel Kuhnel combining to limit the Angels to two runs on three hits and no walks over five innings the rest of the way.
“[Lopez] kind of pitched himself into that jam there,” Kotsay said. “His pitch count was high, so we made the decision to go to the bullpen. Sterner did a nice job in shutting that inning down. For us, that really was kind of the turning point in the game.”