Oakland Athletics: Was this weekend a game-changer?

The Oakland Athletics didn’t sweep the Detroit Tigers this weekend. Still, it appears they may have turned a corner.

There are more reasons than one that the Oakland Athletics may be starting a new chapter of the 2017 season. One reason is the fact that it is only early May, meaning they may still have a chance to salvage what has been predicted to be, and has started out as, a third straight losing season.

For weeks now only slugger Khris Davis and, very surprisingly, first baseman Yonder Alonso have been the only two in the lineup who have been producing offensively. Khris Davis makes sense. He sent 42 balls out of the yard in 2016 and has already hit 10 this season.

Alonso, on the other hand, has been known only for his defensive skills throughout the first seven years of his career. His career high in home runs occurred in 2012 while he was with the San Diego Padres. He hit nine home runs that season. Sunday, Alonso hit a two-run shot to put the A’s ahead of the Tigers in the bottom of the fourth inning for his ninth home run of 2017.

This came the day after he had the first two homer game of his career. He’s been carrying the A’s offensively along with Davis, and he just seems to be getting better as the season goes on. Now it appears that he and Davis are finally getting some offensive help from the rest of the A’s lineup. A team cannot win games on pitching and home runs alone.

More players had been needing to contribute. They needed to hit doubles or singles or take walks to get on base. Veterans new to the team like Trevor Plouffe and Matt Joyce, both who had been hitting under .200 on the year, both played critical roles in the A’s two, very exciting walk-off wins.

Ryon Healy had been in a slump, seemingly racking up strikeout after strikeout. While he is a kid with power and is expected to swing and miss often during his first couple of professional seasons, the Healy the A’s had been seeing recently looked nothing like the Healy of 2016.

In 2016, Healy burst onto the scene in mid-July being called up to the big leagues after a brief 49 game stint in Triple-A Nashville. In just 72 big league games last season, he hit .305/.337/.524 with 13 home runs and 37 RBI. He’s shown what he can really do and it looked like he was beginning to get back into his groove over the weekend.

They also seem to have stumbled across something that could have the potential to develop into a winning formula. Just seeing the players on tv, it was obvious that the problems with team chemistry that the A’s had experienced the past two seasons were over.

It wouldn’t be unprecedented, especially for Oakland, for a group with a lot of new faces to band together as a team and defy the odds against them. A new group of Oakland Athletics banded together and destroyed the odds placed against them and surprising everyone, winning the AL Western Division on the final day of the 2012 season.

Over the past weekend the Athletics finally showed that they felt they could again defy the odds they’ve faced already this season.

On Saturday night they got something they sorely needed, a win. It was not just any win either but a walk-off win and it took the help of the entire team to achieve.

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Then with two outs in the ninth and the game seemingly over, backup catcher Bruce Maxwell drew a two-out walk off of Francisco Rodriguez and Joyce, who was hitting just .188 on the year, surprisingly lined a double down the right field line.

Suddenly out of nowhere the A’s were in business. Utility man Adam Rosales, who is filling in for injured shortstop Marcus Semien, stepped up to the plate and ripped a single into left field scoring both Maxwell and Joyce, giving the team their first walk-off win of the season.

The excitement from the team members was palatable even through the television. The team chemistry that so many had wondered about was blatantly evident, as the players grinned from ear to ear and hugged each other, while shoving the traditional pie into the face of Rosales.

It felt like perhaps they were hitting a turning point in the season, but it was just a single game so could it actually mean something?

It may just have. As you already know Alonso hit his ninth homer of the year on Sunday, but it wasn’t just a couple of home runs that won the game this time.

Everyone seemed to be contributing, including Healy, who drew a walk in the fourth before Alonso went deep and Plouffe who singled to plate Khris Davis in the fifth inning.

On Sunday, similar to Saturday’s game, the Oakland Athletics once again found themselves down going into the 9th inning to face off again with the Tigers’ closer K-Rod.

Needing two runs to win the game, Rajai Davis led off with a walk. Veteran Jed Lowrie then doubled on a deep line drive to center plating Davis and making it a tie game.

After a lineout by Khris Davis, it was Healy’s turn at the plate. He took a 1-0 four-seam fastball from Rodriguez and sent it flying into the over the center field wall giving the Athletics their second walk-off win in as many days.

The excitement was once again palatable with the looks on the player’s faces being ones of both joy and excitement. They hugged, they laughed, they pied.

Without the clubhouse drama that the A’s had had the last two seasons and with more of the lineup beginning to contribute to the A’s offense, it appears that maybe, just maybe, these two walk-off wins could perhaps be what the Oakland Athletics needed to break the losing cycle they’ve been in since basically the middle of the 2014 season.

Can we really know anything from two wins? Of course not.

Next: A's 2016 top draft pick A.J. Puk picks up first professional win

However, the reactions from the players showed that they finally had real team chemistry. They made it clear that they now believe they can win as a team and that is at least half the battle.

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