It is never too early to panic. Most practitioners recommend going crazy when your favorite team’s record is 0-0, so if you’re nervous after watching the Athletics on Monday and Tuesday night, that’s fine.
However, the panic itself is not warranted, as there is a fairly simple explanation for why Oakland looked like they weren’t ready to launch or hit primetime. You’ve been listening for a while about the “3 week summer camp” that will increase teams until the abbreviated 2020 season. The idea was that it would be short enough to start a season, but long enough for teams to be “ready for the game”.
Now let’s take a look at those 3 weeks. It was, from the beginning, not exactly 3 weeks, but actually 20 days. The camp was due to start on July 4, with the opening day on July 24. But that is just a miserable little day. The problem is that the brilliant and fully competent powers (on the Opposite Day) that were in MLB decided to start camp the day their only test center was closed. “You can’t start exercising until you get a negative result, oh, and you can’t take an exam today, either. Or tomorrow, actually, because you know, Sunday. Who works on a Sunday?
Therefore, it was not until Monday, July 6, that the test results were actually returned, meaning that it was not until Monday night that the Athletics were able to conduct training for the first time. The first real and complete training sessions were on Tuesday, July 7.
Then consider that the games you saw earlier this week were not scheduled for July 24, the date “approximately 3 weeks after when it was supposed to be the first workout.” In fact, these games, played on July 20 and 21, occurred every 2 weeks after the A’s finally cleared to start “summer camp.” 2 weeks.
To put it in perspective, the 2-week mark in spring training 1.0 was March 7. At that point, Sean Manaea’s speed is expected to be a mark or two less than where he might be in his first start to the regular season. He anticipates that Mike Fiers’ command could be unpredictable. It doesn’t surprise you when Matt Olson is late for ordinary fastballs or if Khris Davis seems a bit lost with his timing.
The Athletics didn’t look so bad since they seemed like a team just 14 days after camp, and that’s because they … were. For hitters, a huge key is timing, and for pitchers, a huge key is repeatability, and neither is fully present for 2 weeks in live action, and for most of the A’s live action. Last 2 weeks has been in scrimmage games and between teams.
Now he can answer: “The Giants were almost in the exact same position” and he would be right. My answer to that is to point out that the main effect of rust is that it levels the playing field: scrubs play like scrubs because they are, and stars look very much like scrubs because they are rusty.
So when two teams, one highly talented and one highly rebuilding, meet too soon, the result will relatively favor the rebuilding team. Especially when the contender faces 18 pitchers in 18 innings and is not in mid-season shape to adapt.
I wouldn’t really read anything about how flat A hitters looked, or how mediocre A pitchers were sometimes. It is probably fully explained by the calendar and nothing else. As for whether Oakland will be magically ready for primetime on Friday, all I can offer is, “I hope so,” because it’s Schedule 1, the first game of just 60 in a wild ride to come. Ready or not, here we go.
