Oakland Athletics
The Oakland Athletics are another surprising team off to such a poor start. Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections pegged the Athletics to play around .500 baseball throughout the 2021 campaign with an official win-loss prediction of 80-82. In a relatively weak AL West division, that’s enough to keep this team in the playoff hunt late into the season.
Unfortunately, Oakland hasn’t been showing .500 level baseball during the first week of the season. In fact, it’s been much worse. The Athletics are 2-7 and own the worst record in the American League. Oakland is already 4.5 games back of the division lead and the offense is mainly to blame. In nine games, the largest sample size of games for any team through the first week-plus of the season, Oakland scores just 2.78 runs per game. That ranks dead last in the AL and second-worst across baseball.
Oakland’s pitching staff, as a whole, hasn’t fared much better. The A’s rank second-to-last in team ERA with an ugly 6.56 mark. The bullpen, which ranked in the top-tier of the league last season lost All-Star closer Liam Hendriks and a few other names during the offseason and has been in shambles. Oakland already lost new closer Trevor Rosenthal to injury while opposing hitters bat .273 against the A’s pen.