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The Oakland Telegraph
17 May 2026
Bullpen woes and poor defense killing A's
By Phil Ding-Errors, unearned runs correspondent
The whisky sellers in Oakland are delirious. The baseball team's runaway success over the past five years has seen their liquor sales bump along the bottom. Now, as Paulie Beane's team stare down the barrel of becoming also-rans rather than contenders, vendors' profits are soaring. The A's are 15-18 and 7.5 games back of leaders Houston in the American League West. The team that won 108 games last year is suffering one of those dips that make Beane have a large tipple, swear out load at his iPad, and just generally destroy nearby furniture. "I would moan about this being unrealistic", said Beane, "had not that lack of realism seen me win four straight World Series. And also, this is baseball, and, well, s*** happens."
Even Oakland's harshest critics (i.e. San Francisco fans) will admit they have been a bit unlucky. Their runs differential of 156-141 gives them a Pythagorean record of 18-15, which would put a rather different slant on things. The normally defensively excellent A's have typically made about 80-90 fielding errors per season during their recent years of dominance. This season they have already committed 24, but have also had bad luck in the sheer number of unearned runs that these have led to. Of their 141 runs allowed, 32 have been unearned. Field manager Phil D'Manager has been able to stuff a pillow with the volume of hair he's pulled out of his scalp in frustration while watching on from the sidelines.
Pitching has also been poor, when usually it's a strength of the ball club. In the rotation, Jose Fernandez's long-anticipated decline - he has a 3.42 ERA despite a .269 BABIP - has been compensated for by Karl Dickson's emergence as a bona fide ace, but Rodney Stewart and Nathan Hamilton have been, well, poor. But it is the useless buffoons in the bullpen that have really done the damage. The inexplicably hard to hit Melvi Salazar has excelled while closer Eric Wright has been solid enough. But the other cretinous relievers have been hopeless, all posting ERAs well north of 4.00, and just generally serving up easy pitches to grateful hitters. It has got so bad, Beane has even now turned to serial underachiever and home run magnet Johnny Jackson to try and turn things round, with grumpy bum Bill Williams being sent down to the minors. Beane has explored, but so far held off, making trades, but he is unlikely to continue like that if things don't start to turn.
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