‘CH-Oakland’: Athletics go from World Series team to Wild Card bust

And then they stumbled in 50 feet of crap.  But if it counts for anything, at least they weren’t blown out.  Besides, if you’re going to complete an epic collapse to a season in which you were predicted and favored by everybody to win the World Series, why not go down in extra innings in the Wild Card game to a team that hasn’t been to the playoffs in nearly three decades?

It didn’t matter that Royals catcher Salvador Perez was 0-for-5 in the game prior to his sixth at-bat, this one against Jason Hammel of the A’s.  But it was fitting that his lone hit of the game, a liner down the third base line past the glove of a diving Josh Donaldson won the game.  It was the perfect description for both teams.  Kansas City winning without hitting the ball deep while Oakland came up short in the postseason.  Again.

(Oh Oakland… one day you’ll be a winner.  Maybe not in our lifetime, but one day.  But that was one heck of a tease though!)

The A’s 9-8 loss in 12 innings to the Kansas City Royals was the perfect ending to the worst second half of a season any MLB playoff team had.  It was the yin to Oakland’s yang of a dominant first half of the season where, literally, everybody had Oakland hosting and winning the World Series.

Billy Beane made every move possible from the winter through August to put together a winning team with the extra $20 million he received over the winter.  Every move became one too many moves when he traded fan favorite Yoenis Cespedes to the Boston Red Sox for left-hander Jon Lester, one of the best postseason pitchers in the game.

Prior to Tuesday’s American League Wild Card game, Lester was 6-4 in the postseason with a 2.11 ERA including a World Series run with the Sox last year where he went 2-0 in two starts with a 0.59 ERA with 15 strikeouts.

And how did Lester perform in his first postseason away from Fenway?

He went 7 1/3 innings, allowing six runs on eight hits in 111 pitches.

“I really feel like I threw the ball better than what the line score said,” Lester said after the game.  “But the bottom line is, it’s a loss.”

Apparently, he waited until he left Boston to collapse under the bright lights of October baseball.  He gave up three runs after the first three innings, surrendered the last three of his six earned runs in an eighth inning he really had no business being out there for.  (Yes, Bob Melvin deserves blame for this loss too.)

This, of course, isn’t a knock on Kansas City, who could’ve just rolled over after the A’s scored five runs in the sixth inning to go up 7-3.

But the Jon Lester that Billy Beane acquired from Boston wasn’t the same guy who’s considered one of the best pitchers in postseason history.  He wasn’t dominant, he didn’t seem to have a fire behind him to help push Oakland into the Fall Classic, all-in-all he just simply didn’t have “it.”

Or maybe Oakland’s wounds from a losing second half of the season took their toll.  Oakland had a six-game lead in the AL West on June 21, then found themselves 11 games out by mid-September.  Everyone’s World Series favorite went 29-38 in baseball’s second half of the season and 22-33 since Lester left Fenway for O.Co.

While Kansas City kept on hitting and working the bases (seven steals), Oakland’s hitting couldn’t fully come through in the end.

It’s safe to say that they missed Cespedes.

Jed Lowrie, Stephen Vogt, Geovani Soto and Nick Punto all went hitless throughout the game, Coco Crisp went 2-for-6 with an RBI and Brandon Moss gave Oakland a shot to win twice with a pair of two-run homers in the first and the sixth inning.

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“We got off to a fast start, were able to take a big lead and, unfortunately, down the stretch, we weren’t able to nail it down,” A’s closer Sean Doolittle said.  “That’s kind of the way the season went as a whole.”

“Knowing it was a must-win game, and the position we had them in and not getting it done, its way worse than the last couple of years.  To let it slip away the way we did was incredibly frustrating.”

The A’s loss Tuesday night sums up the season the same way a heavy gambler loses in blackjack.

Billy Beane had all of the right cards to get Oakland to the Fall Classic, however in the end he made one too many moves.

Beane put all of his chips in, asked for one more card, and hit 23, when he was at 20.

Moral of the story: sometimes it’s better to keep what you have while you’re already ahead.

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