With his team in desperate need of a strong performance, A’s right-hander Frankie Montas dazzled against the Astros, throwing 6 2/3 innings of one-run ball while racking up 10 strikeouts in a 2-1 victory.
That was July 8, 2021, when Oakland –then 4.5 games behind Houston– had visions of contending for a postseason berth and saw the Astros as a formidable, but still beatable foe.
Fast forward to a year later, and the circumstances are quite different.
Montas, surprisingly, is still an Athletic, but he’s battling a shoulder injury that will force him to miss a scheduled start against Houston this weekend. The Astros are still a formidable foe, yet entering a weekend series at the Coliseum, the A’s are 27.0 games back of a Houston team that could go on 10-game losing streak and still hold a comfortable lead in the AL West.
The worst part for Oakland fans? Houston has spent plenty of money, but the Astros didn’t exactly buy their way to all of this success, a strategy that has never been part of the game plan for an A’s owner in John Fisher who seems allergic to investing in the team’s on-field product.
When veteran shortstop Carlos Correa hit free agency last winter, the Astros let him walk. They developed an in-house replacement in Jeremy Peña, who is batting .270 with a .792 OPS as a rookie. Those numbers are significantly higher than every regular A’s position player.
When Houston needed to rebuild its rotation after a 2019 run to the World Series, a group that lost Gerrit Cole, Wade Miley and Brad Peacock eventually turned to homegrown international prospects Jose Urquidy, Luis García, Cristian Javier and Framber Valdez to carry the load alongside ace Justin Verlander.
The A’s have long relied on drafting and developing homegrown talent to build successful teams, but have also turned to the trade market to add talented young players from other organizations when parting with their own top performers. It’s almost unfathomable to get the type of return on a deal such as the one Houston struck for former Dodgers prospect Yordan Álvarez in 2016, but some of Oakland’s best players under Billy Beane were acquired via significant trades.
So far, deals that sent Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, Sean Manaea and Chris Bassitt elsewhere prior to Opening Day have left the A’s without any strong immediate-impact contributors, which has led to plummeting attendance and a historically bad lineup.
In short, the A’s drafting and development process hasn’t netted can’t-miss prospects, and their trades haven’t paid immediate dividends. So a year after providing the Astros a worthy push in the AL West, the A’s are pushing franchise records for futility.
Source: www.mercurynews.com