The A's Told Us a Lot About Themselves Against Cleveland
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When the A's arrived back home on Tuesday night against the Kansas City Royals, they were sitting atop the AL West. They dropped that first game in extras, in one they had plenty of chances to win. Postgame, the talk was about the team having to learn how to play with expectations. Dropping this one was a disappointment after returning home in first.
The A's ended up winning the next two and taking the series, which was a great rebound for the group, but then fell into a similar trap against the Cleveland Guardians, a team that entered the series in first place in the AL Central. Cleveland would take two of three from the A's, but it was their performance in the finale that showed us a lot about this club.
Saturday's struggles a low point of the season
In Saturday's game, the A's beat themselves. With runners on first and third and two outs, slugger Nick Kurtz was at the plate for the A's with a chance to at least tie the game with a single, or vault the A's ahead with an extra-base hit. Instead, Lawrence Butler got picked off first base as the trail runner, ending the threat.
This may have also ended Kurtz's streak of consecutive games with a walk, which had reached 20. In a big situation like the one on Saturday, pitchers had been avoiding Kurtz. After Butler was picked off, they could go ahead and attack Kurtz with the bases empty the following inning, especially after the Cleveland offense added some cushion in the top of the inning.
That pickoff was the turning point in the game. The A's were deflated, and the Guardians took advantage. Cleveland went on to score three in the next half-inning, and ended up with 14 runs on the afternoon overall.
After the staff gave up 14 runs, there were questions that came out of this game on the pitching side, like how can the A's get the most out of Jacob Lopez — and soon — and if Luis Morales can find what made him great last year yet again in 2026. The A's will have to come up with a solution for the back-end of the rotation, because this problem won't fix itself.
With Lopez's struggles to get through five innings without an implosion, and Morales needing a lot of time to get right mechanically in Triple-A, that's two members of the Opening Day rotation that the team hasn't been able to rely on.
J.T. Ginn has shown flashes since taking over for Morales, but Saturday's game highlighted the team's biggest perceived weakness coming into the season, and caused some panic among the fanbase. This morning we highlighted some of the minor-league options for the A's to consider on the pitching side, and gave an estimate for when we could see No. 3 prospect Gage Jump in Sacramento.
Those pitching plans are ever-evolving on the team side. But what they showed us on Sunday was encouraging.
Sunday
In Sunday's game, Colby Thomas hit a solo home run in the second inning and made a nice play in the outfield at the wall — though his pitcher Aaron Civale said postgame he wasn't sure if Thomas had robbed a homer.
The A's also saw Zack Gelof and Tyler Soderstrom go back-to-back with solo homers of their own in the fifth, and then Jeff McNeil lined a double into right that cleared the bases in the sixth. Civale got through six innings for the first time this season, and allowed just one run in the process, weaving his way in and out of traffic.
This was a team that was answering the call for those expectations, and playing a clean game against another division leader.
We asked Kotsay after the game how he felt his team played when facing those expectations from this week, and what he's going to be looking to build upon from this week moving forward.
"Today kind of showed it. Today was a big game for us. Dropping these last two games, you could feel a difference in the club emotionally. There was — I don't want to use the word disappointment — but there was a feeling of like, 'man we really should have won those games.'
"I think that showed today in the focus when they came out to play. To win a game, after losing two tough games to a really quality team — a first-place team — I think that says a lot about the maturity and playing with some of those expectations."
The A's next series will be in Philadelphia, which one of the toughest places to play in the league. Their resilience will certainly be tested.
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Jason has been covering the A’s at various sites for over a decade, and was the original host of the Locked on A’s podcast. Mason Miller once said he likes Jason's content.
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