The Oakland Athletics took a walk-off victory against the Astros Friday night, with a double (by) Martini driving in the tying run in the ninth, and a MOlson leading off the tenth with a game winning home run. Rookie Nick Martini gave the team a needed boost in the lead-off spot. First baseman Matt Olson fell off from his great 2017 numbers, but playing every day is still delivering plenty of power. The win leaves Oakland just one game behind the Astros in the AL West.
Oakland hit bottom with a loss on June 15th, putting them 11 1/2 games behind Houston. They started winning after that, although it took a few days for the games back to start to diminish. Starting on June 16th, the Athletics are 39-13, .750, tied with Boston for the best record in the majors. The Astros are a perfectly reasonable 28-23, which normally would be enough to hold an 11 1/2 game lead.
The surge for Oakland is due to their offense. Athletics pitchers allowed a .231/.297/.366 slash line, with 422 K in 1791 AB. The Astros are better, with a .221/.285/.361 slash line and 556 K in 1705 AB. Oakland batters are doing a much better job of getting on base and hitting for power, with a .259/.334/.456 slash line compared to .239/.319/.412 for the Astros.
Both teams are playing very close games in this span. Houston has a closeness score of 1.97, fourth lowest, while Oakland is at 2.02, fifth lowest. There’s probably been a bit of good luck involved in Oakland’s run. (For comparison, Boston’s closeness score is 2.48, 7th highest.) One might also expect the bullpens to be part of that closeness score. Oakland batters are hitting .275/.355/.501 against opposing bullpens during this run, while the Athletics pen is holding opponents to a .208/.286/.327 slash line.
It’s been a good run for the Athletics, and we’ll see if they can carry it through for six more weeks of the regular season and into October.
from baseballmusings.com https://ift.tt/2Boz0Gk
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