TORONTO -- The season has just begun, but this is not a tone the Athletics were hoping to set.
Intent on making a statement with their high-powered lineup projected by many this spring to perform as a top-5 unit in MLB, the A’s bats fell flat throughout an opening series sweep at the hands of the defending American League champion Blue Jays, Sunday’s 5-2 loss at Rogers Centre included.
Aside from Shea Langeliers, who has swung it as well as anybody in baseball with six hits and three home runs, A’s hitters fell into a collective slump against Toronto that culminated in some unwanted history. Combining to strike out a whopping 50 times during this series, the A’s set the Modern Era (since 1900) record for most strikeouts by an offense through a team's first three games, surpassing the previous mark of 46 held by the 2020 Tigers.
Strikeouts have become much more prevalent across the league over the past decade, especially for a team like the A’s that doesn’t shy away from its identity as a club that will rely heavily on the long ball. So, the fact that they’ve racked up this many strikeouts already, as historic a number as it is, is not exactly a shock.
The bigger concern this series was the lack of production. Take away Langeliers, and the rest of the A’s offense has recorded just 10 hits and five runs in three games. Not exactly the start envisioned for this group with no shortage of thump up and down the order.
What is the reason for such a sluggish start? Is it a product of running into a quality pitching staff from the jump, including a pair of aces in Kevin Gausman and Dylan Cease the first two games? Or, is this core of talented, but still somewhat inexperienced hitters such as Nick Kurtz, Jacob Wilson and Max Muncy – all of whom were rookies last year – pressing at the plate?
“It’s probably a combination of both,” manager Mark Kotsay said. “We faced good pitching. They have some really good arms. … Offensively, there may be some press to these guys. We all know they’re anxious to go out and win.”
Brent Rooker, a leader of this offensive core and model of consistency as a .268 hitter with 99 home runs over the previous three seasons, shared a similar sentiment.
“Credit to their [pitchers],” said Rooker, held to 1-for-13 with eight strikeouts this series. “Every arm they ran out there threw the ball really well. … Combine that with a lineup of guys who are probably a little amped up and trying to do a little bit too much, which is understandable for the first three games here, it’s a common thing.
“End of the day, we know we’re good. We know what we can do. We’re not going to let three games with a subpar performance change our minds about that.”
Three games certainly do not define a season. When it’s the first three games of a season, however, any early struggles, fair or not, are magnified, especially when it’s coming from the expected strength of this ballclub that generated heavy preseason hype.
“It’s a three-game sample size,” Rooker said. “Three-game sample sizes that happen in games one, two and three tend to get made a bigger deal out of than three-game sample sizes in Games 71, 72 and 73.”
Nobody is going to sound the alarm on this A’s squad three games in. It’s early, which helps to take away the positives from such a tough series. The good from this one was that the A’s played three close games with solid starting pitching throughout against a team that was one out away from winning the World Series, and they easily could have won at least two of these games.
Of course, the schedule does not get easier from here. The next two weeks will see the playoff-hopeful A’s face nothing but teams expected to at least be in the postseason conversation. They head to Atlanta for three games against the Braves starting Monday, return home for three games against the Astros, then head out for a week in New York against the Yankees and Mets.
“It’s a little bit of a gauntlet to start the year,” Rooker said. “We’re excited about that. It’s going to let us know where we’re at and what we need to work on to get to the place we want to be by the end of the year.”