A's Season May be Lost, But They Can Still Finish Around .500

The goal coming into this season for everyone involved with the Athletics was to finish with a record around .500. They said it at the end of the 2024 campaign, and reiterated that point when the 2025 season began. Then they went 1-20 from early May and into June.

It was a series at the beginning of that stretch against the Seattle Mariners that kicked off the losing streak, and A's manager Mark Kotsay said recently that the only game he remembered from it was the one where Jacob Wilson had a walk-off hit. "I've wiped out those 20 games."

The next day, A's GM David Forst was asked how he assesses the A's, given that they went 1-20 for a period of time, but they've been an above .500 club outside of those three weeks.

"I'll be honest, I still don't know what to make of that 21-game stretch. We cannot subtract it from our record. We've played really well on both sides of that stretch, winning series from Toronto, from Houston, from Seattle--all playoff teams." He went on to say that he's happy with the development on the field and the ways in which the team has competed.

After Friday night's 5-1 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks, the A's record sits at 49-63, 14 games below their goal of .500. That said, they have also been a 48-43 club outside of that stretch of games that sunk the season. If they'd gone 6-15, they'd still have an outside shot at a postseason spot.

But as Forst said, you can't erase those games from the ledger. Still, there is some hope with the way that the team has been playing of late that they could end up getting fairly close to their goal to open the season.

First off, the A's have been pitching a whole lot better at home of late. Luis Severino is 1-9 with a 6.34 ERA at home this year, but that one win came in his first home start out of the break when he began utilizing his fastball a bit more, which has led him to a 3-0 record in the second half.

The A's as a team are 8-5 with a 3.92 ERA at home since the beginning of July, a great sign for a team that is still 23-32 at Sutter Health Park on the year. With the offensive potential that this group has, that could be enough to win them plenty of games if the arms hold up.

The other reason that the A's may be able to go on a bit of a heater in the coming weeks is that their schedule in August appears to be fairly soft following the trade deadline. The A's are facing the Arizona Diamondbacks this weekend, and they just traded their big home run hitter in Eugenio Suarez, along with a number of other key pieces.

Next week they'll be facing the Washington Nationals (44-65) and Baltimore Orioles (50-60) on the road. After that, they return home to face the Tampa Bay Rays (54-57) and Los Angeles Angels (53-57), which could present a challenging homestand, but the Rays have been struggling of late, going 2-8 in their past ten.

From August 19-21, they'll be facing a depleted Minnesota Twins team that just shipped off ten players at the deadline. They're 51-58, but their second half isn't likely to go well. From that point on, it gets a little tougher with games against the Mariners, Tigers, and Rangers to close out the month.

The other key for the A's is that they'll have a day off each week through the rest of the season. When the A's would struggle earlier in the year, it was because they were on 16-game stretches without a day off to rest the bullpen, and if they didn't get enough innings from their starter one game, it had plenty of carryover effect. The A's have been using their long relievers far less often these days.

This isn't to say that the A's will finish with an 81-81 record. But there are some winnable games coming up over the next three weeks that could help pad the record a bit, before they get to face some tougher tests at month's end. The A's are already on a 71-win pace, even with the 1-20 patch of games in the mix.

Over the rest of the season, they've been on an 85-win pace. Maybe we see the A's finish closer to a 75-win team when all is said and done.