King Felix rules over A’s

By Art Spander

OAKLAND, Calif.  –-  There’s a reason they call him King Felix. “He can throw any pitch on any count,” said Bob Melvin. He’s the Oakland Athletics' manager. He was in the other dugout Monday night, opening night, a disappointing night for Melvin and the A’s.
    
A losing night.
  
“Opening night,” Melvin reminded, not that anyone needed reminding, “you’re always going to face the other team’s best pitcher.”
   
The Seattle Mariners’ best pitcher. One of baseball’s best pitchers. Felix Hernandez, who’s won an American League Cy Young Award, who last season threw a perfect game, who by anyone’s definition is pure baseball royalty.
   
“Maybe he didn’t have his best velocity,” said Melvin, a former catcher who knows all about pitching and too much about Hernandez, “but he was great.”
   
What Hernandez did was retire the first 10 batters of the game, really of the season, and although Hernandez would allow three hits – one to his former battery mate, John Jaso, whose double in the fourth was end of the no-hitter – the A’s never scored, losing 2-0.
   
An opening day and night without runs from teams by the Bay. Down in Los Angeles, the Giants – the World Series champion Giants, if you will – were blanked by the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw, 4-0. A few hours later, up at this end of the state, the A’s, the American League West Champions, were just as ineffective.
  
Two teams, two winning teams from 2012, zero runs.
   
“You always get somebody’s ace,” said Melvin.
    
The A’s similarly had one of their aces pitching, Brett Anderson. He struck out the first four Mariners. He went seven innings. Permitted only four hits and two runs.
   
“You’re going to take seven innings and two runs anytime from your starter,” Melvin insisted. Absolutely. But when your team gets no runs, you’re in trouble.
    
The A’s traded for Jaso in January. So long, Felix. “It’s easier catching him than batting against him,” said Jaso. But he did get that double. He did halt any chance for more perfection.
   
Before the game, Hernandez sent his former catcher a remembrance from the perfect game against Tampa Bay last August, a Rolex watch. Those beauties don’t come cheaply, starting a $5,000 or so and climbing exorbitantly depending on the number of diamonds on the face. Then again, Hernandez signed a $175-million, seven-year contract in January, so he has a bit of spare cash.
  
Someone asked Jaso whether it meant more getting a watch from Hernandez or a hit. “The hit,” he said, not all that seriously. “Then he struck me out.”
  
Hernandez struck out eight in his 7 2/3 innings, walking only one. “He had his stuff,” agreed Jaso. “He was really fun to catch when I was in Seattle. But today, so was Brett.”
 
Anderson is the medical miracle. The lefthander underwent Tommy John surgery in June 2011 and didn’t pitch again until last August. Then he strained an oblique muscle in September and missed more time. But on October 10, with the A’s trailing the Detroit Tigers two games to none in the best-of-five American League Division Series, Anderson, in his first start in six weeks, went six scoreless innings.
   
Monday night, opening night, was the next time Anderson pitched in competition. He liked the way he threw, for the most part. He didn’t like giving up the runs.

“A couple of mistakes,” said Anderson, analyzing the performance. “We had a chance to win it. I walked the leadoff batter (in the fifth). I hate walking people. That was my biggest downfall.”
   
The O.Co Coliseum was a wild place, a sellout – if with an asterisk, because the tarped rows of seats restrict attendance to 36,067 – the fans coming out with their rally towels and high hopes.
    
Where the A’s go from here – no jokes about San Jose – nobody is certain, but they won’t be going up against Hernandez at least for a few days, maybe a few weeks.
    
“We kept feeling we would pull it out,” said Melvin, the 2012 American League manager of the year. “In close games you have to have that feeling. We had it all last year, and it worked. A lot of times, one hit makes the difference.”
    
Hernandez wouldn’t let it work Monday night. The fans could chant “Let’s go Oakland.” The A’s couldn’t get that one hit. The A’s couldn’t get any runs.
    
“Felix is probably as good a pitcher as anyone as getting guys to swing at pitches,” said Melvin. He meant pitches at which they shouldn’t have swung. Pitches which they couldn’t hit.
   
At least when thrown by King Felix, as he threw them Monday night. So disappointing.

A’s Melvin wants winners, even in exhibitions

By Art Spander

PHOENIX – It isn’t as if the final score is inconsequential. The games indeed are exhibitions in the candid description of baseball’s warm-ups.
  
Yet A’s manager Bob Melvin wants players who understand the importance of winning, even at the time of year when it isn’t important.
  
He cares about the thought process, the attempt even more than the result.
   
The idea in exhibitions is to perfect techniques, for the pitcher to work on, say, fastballs to the left side of the plate for a righthander such as Dan Straily, Oakland’s starter Wednesday against San Diego.
    
“Even if they had a lot of lefthander batters in the lineup,” said Straily.
   
In the regular season, it doesn’t matter who does what, just that the team does what it needs to do -- win.
   
In the exhibition season, the individual takes precedence, which is why final scores are so high, Oakland beating San Diego, 11-6.
  
“But,” cautioned Melvin, “I don’t want people who don’t come out in any game and try to win.”
  
It was one of those almost afternoons in the desert, the temperature finally climbing – the first pitch came with the thermometer at a cool 63 degrees – and the balls finally flying.
  
Sure a couple of 80-degree days would be welcome, but as Melvin reminded, “not every night at the Coliseum is warm.”
   
The A’s, as February heads into March, still are trying to get hot with the public. There were those sellout crowds at Oakland at the end of the regular season and the playoffs, but down here, midweek at least, not many seem interested.
  
Attendance Wednesday was 1,867 at 10,000-seat Phoenix Muni.
  
The Athletics continue as the Great Unknown. They were the Cinderella team of 2012, but other than Yoenis Cespedes, the Cuban, star quality is lacking.
   
Players such Jemile Weeks (who led off with a home run in a four-run first), Seth Smith and Josh Reddick are on the cusp of fame. They also are ignored by ESPN and, as Wednesday’s embarrassing crowd indicated, by the fans.
 
Phoenix and Scottsdale – and Mesa – belong to the Giants and Cubs. Even the Dodgers, with their modern complex 25 freeway miles to the west in Glendale, don’t draw like San Francisco and Chicago, well established physically and psychologically.
   
At least, on Friday the Giants come to Phoenix, bringing their cachet – a World Series championship gets attention – and their fans. Better to have a crowd even if it's an opposition crowd.
    
The A’s at the least are building on the field. Only three and a half weeks ago, late for a trade unless Billy Beane is doing the trading, Oakland acquired Jed Lowrie from Houston in exchange for Chris Carter, with a few other individuals tossed in.
   
Lowrie, who was drafted out of Stanford by the Red Sox, then went to the Astros, in theory would play “all over the place” in the infield, according to Beane. On Wednesday, he was at third, and in his first two at-bats had a double and single,  respectively.
  
“He swung the bat well,” confirmed Melvin, “but for me what counts is he can play multiple positions. The ball he made a play on in the first inning was just as important as his offense.”

In his first spring training in Arizona after time in Florida, Lowrie, 28, said he is “just trying to get himself ready to be an everyday guy.”
  
He’s ready. He knows his status.
   
“There are guys here trying to make the team,” Lowrie said, “trying to impress. I’m not in that . . .”
  
The word Lowrie might have chosen is “category.” He’s a starter, a switch hitter, a second baseman, third baseman and shortstop. He’s not a star, but we know how little that seems to matter in Oakland.
   
The A’s, as the cover of their media guide emphasizes in words and a wonderful photo of players celebrating, are the 2012 AL West Champions. And that end-of-September run last year, when they overtook Texas, has gained them respect.
    
Stories about the renaissance have been everywhere. The nothing A’s are now the special A’s. They are being predicted to battle the Angels for the division, just as in the National League the Dodgers are figured to match up against the Giants.
     
Last February, such a suggestion would have seemed absurd, but now it’s expected. Oakland proved it could win.

Bob Melvin doesn’t want his team to forget that, even in exhibition games.

Fans Give the A’s a Last Hurrah

By Art Spander

OAKLAND – It was over, but it wasn’t over. Not for the fans, so appreciative, so loud. The Detroit Tigers had won, and were celebrating out there on the A’s mound, on Oakland’s mound. But that didn’t shut down or shut up the fans.
  
“Let’s go Oakland. Let’s go Oakland.’’ The chant kept repeating. Kept reverberating.
   
“Let’s go Oakland.’’ Even though Oakland, the A’s, weren’t going anywhere except to the finish of a season that never will be forgotten.
  
“Let’s go Oakland. Let’s go Oakland.’’ And there went Oakland, there went the A’s, out of the home dugout and onto the field, a last hurrah, a last thank you, waving their hats as the crowd, stubborn, persistent, grateful, waved those yellow rally towels in response.
   
A difficult ending, the Tigers winning 6-0 Thursday in the deciding fifth game of the American League Division Series. Domination by one of the most dominating pitchers in the sport, Justin Verlander, who never gave the A’s a chance. A tough climax to a rewarding season.
   
But in a way a great climax for fans who understood, for fans who wanted to show they understood.
  
“It was great,’’ said Michael Crowley, the A’s president, plopped into a post-game chair in the clubhouse office of equipment chief Steve Vucinich. “And they were all fans of the A’s.’’
   
Absolutely. No traitors in Red Sox or Yankee shirts, who during the regular season turn O.co Coliseum into one of their temporary homes. No Giants partisans who cross the Bay Bridge for the interleague games.

They were all fans of the A’s, all loud, all hopeful, all disappointed, all empathetic.

“They wouldn’t have been doing that in New York or Boston,” said Evan Scribner, who pitched the eighth and ninth for the A’s. No, they wouldn’t have. Not a chance.
   
“These fans are amazing,’’ said Scribner.
   
The word has been overused the last month, an adjective reflecting the surprising run of the A’s as they overtook the Rangers to win the AL West, as they came back from two games down – and two runs down in the ninth on Wednesday – to get equal with the Tigers.
   
They were the miracle workers, the youngest, second-lowest-paid team in the majors, winning games only the faithful dared dream they would win, bringing life to a franchise too long moribund, owned by a man too long determined to move to San Jose.
  
But eventually the slipper becomes a pumpkin. Eventually the miracles run out and a team with a Triple Crown winner, Miguel Cabrera, a team with a Verlander, both an American League MVP and Cy Young winner, a team with a $122-million payroll, more than twice that of the A’s, proves its worth.
    
The longer a series goes, the longer a golf tournament goes, the longer a Super Bowl goes, the greater the odds the favorite will prevail. As in this playoff, which went one game too many for the A’s, Detroit prevailed.
  
How the A’s even got to the fifth game seems remarkable. They had a combined 50 strikeouts – 11 alone Thursday against Verlander – in the five games, an average of 10 a game.
  
They needed that spectacular ninth-inning rally to win Game Four.  
   
They were courageous. They were selfless. They just weren’t quite as good as the Tigers.
  
Oakland, the maligned city, where the police have problems, where the murder rate is high, the blue-collar town with the blue-collar team, the town from which the A’s, the Warriors and maybe even the Raiders want to move, needed this team. This team needed Oakland, needed the whole East Bay, and finally it got it.
   
Suddenly there was hope. Suddenly there was joy. The franchise that in March was supposed to lose 100 games in October got close to winning 100, got close to winning a first-round playoff. That it did not, that it lost, was not lost on the fans, who know the game, who know their team.
  
“We didn’t think it was going to end today,’’ said Bob Melvin, the Oakland manager. “Not for a second.” He’s as special as the club, a Bay Area guy who went to Cal, who used to watch events at the Coliseum.
  
As much as anyone, he grasped the significance of this season of unexpected triumph – and inevitable defeat.
  
“We knew we were going up against a good pitcher,’’ agreed Melvin. “That didn’t mean we didn’t think we were going to win. We’ve gone up against good pitchers this year.
 
“Our crowd was looking for just about anything, a walk, a three-ball count. They were looking for anything to pick us up and try and help us out. We really appreciate it. They stayed there and kind of gave us a curtain call. We really appreciate that. It truly was the 10th man for us.”
  
One man for Detroit was too much for 10 men from Oakland. But that didn’t still the chanting. “Let’s go Oakland. Let’s go Oakland.”

Improbable Weather, Improbable A’s

By Art Spander

OAKLAND -- It was 87 degrees at the first pitch. On October 2. In Oakland. If that makes sense, then why shouldn’t the A’s? “Nobody saw this coming,’’ both Tim Kurkjian and Terry Francona said on ESPN Tuesday morning about the miracle.

What they and everyone else saw Tuesday evening were the Oakland Athletics tied for first place in the American League West with Texas, and one last game, the biggest game of arguably the most improbable season, a few hours away.

“The fact that we won (Monday),’’ said Bob Melvin, the homegrown A’s manager, “we were in better position (Tuesday). Now both teams have to go out and see what they can do.’’

The story is what the A’s already have done. After the 3-1 win over the Rangers, after 30,660 spectators shouted and screamed, after the drummers out in the bleachers had finished, Oakland was locked with the Rangers at the top of the division.

In three months, they had gained 13 games on Texas. In three months, they had destroyed the theory that in baseball, like in wine and cars, you get what you pay for.

Because compared to other franchises, the people who run the A’s – owner Lew Wolff and GM Billy Beane (and can you imagine his inner smile?) – paid almost nothing for the players on the roster and, no matter what happens Wednesday, have received everything.

“We’ve had a nice run,’’ said Melvin, in the understatement of the year. BoMel, as he is known, wants to stay as low-key as imaginable for the express purpose of keeping his young athletes just as low-key.

If, after the sparkling wine spritzing on Monday night when the A’s clinched at least a wild card place, if after a celebration that back in March – hell, back in May when Oakland lost nine in a row – seemed as unlikely as 87-degree night in October.

Night baseball by the bay is supposed to be cold, and in Oakland this season it was supposed to be bad. “People said the A’s might lose 100 games,’’ said Ray Fosse, their former catcher and current TV analyst.

The question in spring was whether the Angels, who spent $240 million for Albert Pujols and another $77 million for pitcher C.J. Wilson, could overtake the Rangers, the 2011 and 2010 American League champions. But it was the A’s who caught the Angels, after going 56-26 since June 30 -- which was a day Oakland lost to Texas -- while the Rangers went 43-39.

On Monday night, Melvin found it difficult to speak, overtaken by emotion, doused in bubbly, and thinking about the past.

Melvin will be 51 in another month. He grew up on the Peninsula, went to Menlo-Atherton High, then played at Cal, then after a bit with the Detroit Tigers came for a while to the Giants. You can’t get more local than that. Or more connected to the region.

“What I was thinking of,’’ Melvin explained later, “was the times I had been to the Coliseum, the rock concerts – The Who – the postseason games the A’s played in the early 70s when I was a kid. It all was coming back."

Lew Wolff, the A’s owner, the man who desperately is trying to move the team to San Jose some 30 miles down the freeway, has been a despised figure in Oakland. But suddenly, the image has changed, as that of his ball club.

Wolff properly was part of the Monday jubilation, and he said to a television camera, wonderfully candid, “I didn’t think we’d be here.’’ He meant in the playoffs. Maybe he also meant in Oakland.

That war between Wolff and the cross-bay San Francisco Giants, who won’t relinquish their territorial rights on San Jose to the A’s, is at a temporary truce. The battles will be on the diamonds, the Giants and A’s both in the postseason in what most be the giddiest time in years for Bay Area baseball lovers.

The Giants’ success was expected. Needless to add, the A’s was not. Tuesday night, they got the victory using four pitchers, two of whom, starter Travis Blackley and closer Grant Balfour, are Australian. But why not? Baseball has been called the national pastime, but the nation was never specified.

Blackley, picked up from the Giants off waivers in May, went two innings against the Yankees and one inning against the Rangers in his previous two games. Tuesday night, he pitched six innings, allowing three hits and a run. Balfour came in for the ninth and in order retired Josh Hamilton, Adrian Beltre and Nelson Cruz, the heart of the order.

That’s a baseball term. The order for the A’s is one with plenty of heart.

“We got better as the year went along,’’ said Melvin. Nobody saw it coming.

Newsday (N.Y.): Despite low budget, A's battling for wild card

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND, Calif. -- The Athletics' tough and important 10-game trip took a positive turn Thursday after a much-needed 12-4 win over the Tigers in Detroit that averted a three-game sweep.

The next stop for the surprising A's is the Bronx Friday night for the start of a three-game series against the Yankees. Then it's on  to Texas to play the American League West-leading Rangers.

Seth Smith homered, doubled and drove in four runs yesterday. The trip did not get off to a good start for Oakland. Lefthander Brett Anderson went down Wednesday with a right oblique strain in the third inning of a 6-2 defeat. Manager Bob Melvin said Anderson will miss the rest of the regular season and that he doesn't know if he would be available for the playoffs -- if the A's get there.

That added to the recent woes of the starting rotation. Brandon McCarthy suffered a fractured skull when he was hit by a line drive Sept. 5. Now Anderson.

But the A's and Orioles, another unforeseen success, are still the leaders in the wild- card race with records of 85-64. Both have small payrolls and great hopes.

The odds in March on the A's reaching the World Series were as high as 200-1. They had traded their only three All-Stars, all pitchers -- Gio Gonzalez, Trevor Cahill and Andrew  Bailey -- over the winter. "Hard to let guys like that go," Melvin said.

But the guys they got in return, supposedly players who would not help Oakland until 2013 or 2014 -- if they weren't traded -- and the young players  already on the roster developed quickly.

Tommy Milone came from Washington with several  others in exchange for Gonzalez. He's 13-10, the winningest rookie pitcher for  the A's in the 45 seasons they have been in Oakland.

A 26-year-old Cuban, Yoenis Cespedes, signed in February for $36 million for four years, seemingly an outrageous sum for a team with the second-lowest payroll in the majors. It appears to have been money well spent, because Cespedes is batting .293 and is second to Angels phenom Mike Trout among AL rookies  in runs (59), hits (122), doubles (22), homers (19) and RBIs (73).

"I think everybody's outdone what the baseball world's expectations would be," said Melvin, who took control of the A's in June 2011 and is having a ball. Melvin, 50, grew up across the Bay in Menlo Park and played at Cal in Berkeley, a few miles north of the O.Co Coliseum. He went to games and rock concerts at the stadium. He played for the Giants, among other teams, and  managed for Seattle and Arizona.

He says this is special.

"The pride factor of being at home, managing a team you grew up watching," Melvin said, "I don't think you can put a price on that. On top of that, the younger players have made it exciting."

Among them is lefthanded reliever Sean Doolittle, almost 26, who although a pitching star at the University of Virginia was a first-round pick in 2007 by Oakland as a first baseman. After he suffered a knee injury, the A's switched him back to pitcher, where his professional debut came only last fall in the Instructional League.

On July 21 Doolittle (1-0, 3.35 ERA) came in to pitch the ninth against the Yankees. He gave up a hit to Alex Rodriguez, then struck out Robinson Cano, Mark Teixeira and Andruw Jones to save a 2-1 win in Oakland.

"How would you expect a guy like Doolittle to come up and do what he's done?" Melvin asked rhetorically.

Pitching has been the key for Oakland, even with the loss of Bartolo Colon, suspended for 50 games in late August for testing positive for testosterone. The A's ERA is 3.50, second to Tampa in the AL. That's a good thing because the A's batting average is .236. Only Seattle is worse.

The A's were 26-35 after games of June 10. Then they had the best July in the majors, 19-5.

"We do have good pitching," Melvin said, "whether starters or the bullpen, and that's been the most consistent part of our team over the course of the season."

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