A's Can't Afford Blown Save Issues Again in 2020

The A's made the playoffs despite tying for the MLB lead in blown saves in 2019. The path forward would be easier if Trivino, Soria and Hendriks cut into that.

Just how exactly did the A’s win 97 games last year?

This was a team with 31 blown saves. Thirty. One. Blown. Saves.

Only one other team in Major League Baseball matched that total last year, the Boston Red Sox. The Sox outscored the A’s by 56 runs and barely broke even, getting 84 wins and finishing nowhere near the playoffs.

But the A’s won 97 games despite it all. When Oakland won 97 games the year before in 2018, they were more on point, with just 18 blown saves, the tied for the fifth-best total in baseball.

To win 97 with all that shaky bullpen work underscores just how good Oakland was offensively, defensively and starting. To be fair, the A’s did have 10 walk-off wins, tied with Tampa Bay for the most in the American League, and had 44 come-from-behind wins, also the most in the AL.

The A’s had five different pitchers with five or more blown saves: closer Liam Hendriks (seven) and Joakim Soria, Ryan Buchter, Blake Treinen and Lou Trevino (five each). Hendriks’ total is counterbalanced by his overall record, 4-4, 25 saves, a 1.80 ERA and an All-Star berth. Buchter and Treinen have moved on, but the A’s will need better work out of Soria (2-4, 4.30) and in particular Trivino (4-6, 5.25).

As the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out, the A’s have had Trivino move from the first-base side of the putting rubber to the third-base side.

“It’s a little different look for him,” manager Bob Melvin told the A’s media. “We felt like with his mechanics, that would be a little bit easier for him to throw strikes.”

For his part, Trivino is still making the adjustment. He’s pitched in five spring games, a total of five innings and has allowed five runs, a 9.00 ERA.

One of the key setup men in the A’s run to 97-games in 2018 (8-3 .292 ERA and four saves in 74 innings over 69 games), Trivino is spending the spring looking to get back to the pitcher he was in 2018.

“Right now, some of my off-speed (pitches) kind of spins on me, I think because of the rubber change,” Trivino told the paper. “It’s kind of readjusting my sights to have everything look sharp.”

Soria’s spring hasn’t been notably better. He brought a 9.00 ERA into Sunday, when he threw one scoreless inning in the A’s 11-3 win over the Brewers in Mesa, Ariz., pitching out of a two-on, two-out jam in the fourth to keep the game close when the A’s were trailing 2-1. In three Cactus League games to date, he’s thrown two innings, allowed three hits, three walks and struck out three.

Melvin would like to see Trivino’s mental focus get back to being where it was in 2018.

“Sometimes that second year for a player can be tough,” the manager said earlier in the camp. “That first year came pretty easy for him. I don’t think it’s a stuff thing. It’s just that sometimes mentally it came so easy for you. Then you start to struggle and you start to doubt yourself a little bit.

“I think it’s more between the ears. But going through that will make him better going into the season.”