AL Contenders Better Hope Oakland A's Don't Back into the Postseason

It's been a while since anyone was afraid of the Oakland A's. 

After boasting baseball's highest-scoring offense and the game's best record for much of the first half, the A's have plunged into a vertigo-inducing free fall. They're 26-34 since the All-Star break and 19-29 since they traded slugger Yoenis Cespedes to the Boston Red Sox for ace Jon Lester.

The point of the Lester deal was to bolster the rotation for a deep playoff run. Now, Oakland is scrambling desperately just to get to October.

"The production across the board from everybody was much better in the first four months or so and hasn't been since," manager Bob Melvin told MLB.com's Jane Lee. "And when you continually struggle, it can affect your confidence..."

Yet, even with all of the fecklessness and hand-wringing, the A's would be in the first wild-card position if the season ended today.

After defeating the Philadelphia Phillies 8-6 in 10 innings Sunday afternoon, Oakland stands at 85-70. At 84-70, the Kansas City Royals are nipping at their heels. And the Seattle Mariners, at 83-72, lurk just two games back.

That means the A's will have to scratch and claw to qualify for a postseason that once seemed like a foregone conclusion.

So you might think this is the club every other American League contender wants to face, the playoff patsy. You'd be wrong.

First, consider the starting corps. While the injury-bitten, AL West-winning Los Angeles Angels are reportedly mulling a three-man rotation for the division series, per Alden Gonzalez of MLB.com, Oakland is drowning in depth.

Ben Margot/Associated Press

After Lester—who has posted a 2.20 ERA in 10 starts with the A's and owns an even stingier 2.11 career postseason ERA—the A's can toss out Jeff Samardzija, Sonny Gray and Scott Kazmir. That's a shutdown top four, maybe the best in the game.

As for the bats...well, about that. Oakland's team batting average has plummeted 20 points in the second half, from .251 to .231, and they've averaged 3.9 runs per game, down from 4.9 in the first half.

Slumps have spread like a virus, but no player embodies Oakland's second-half futility more than Brandon Moss. Moss was one of the premier power hitters in baseball prior to the All-Star break, belting 21 home runs.

Since the break? The outfielder/first baseman has managed just four big flies to go along with an anemic .175 batting average.

Still, Sunday's win over the Phillies served as a reminder of what the Athletics can do with the lumber. Third baseman Josh Donaldson led the charge, going 3-for-5 and launching a two-run, walk-off blast. Moss added a double and an RBI. 

Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

And others—including role players Nick Punto and Nate Freiman—chipped in with big hits off the bench. It was the sort of balanced attack that made the A's so dangerous early in the season. 

If they could recapture that, or even a semblance of it, it'd likely be enough to support their superlative arms.

"Every win right now is big for this team. Every win is important," Donaldson told MLB.com's Lee on Sept. 20 after the A's beat Philadelphia 3-1. "It gets the momentum going on the right track, and hopefully we can build on this thing tomorrow and the rest of the year."

"A game like that can be real emotional," Melvin said after Sunday's win, per MLB.com's Aaron Leibowitz. "Obviously a good feeling amongst the group right now. You always hope that will carry over."

The A's may be showing signs of life, but some have already written their obituary, like Carl Steward of the San Jose Mercury News:

"

Autopsies will abound once it's over. But from this view, the demise of the A's has everything to do with the evaporation of esprit de corps that made the team special and dangerous for 2½ years. There was something substantive to Oakland being greater than the sum of its parts, that everybody got along so well, and the Bob Melvin mantra of "play for today" was a genuine rallying cry to their success.

"

Perhaps. But this team still has a decent shot to get in. And if the A's do, they might remind everyone why they used to be so scary.

All statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.