A'srospectus

I have given very little love to the Oakland A's this season. The A's have always been my AL team but in recent years they have been just as bad as the Mets and at times even more unwatchable. The rise of the Rays in recent years has also stolen some of my AL love, they are pretty much just like the A's except a little bit more successful and with a cool coach. That being said I will always come back to my Athletics and the A's remain my go to number 2 team.

My question today is why don't they A's get the respect they deserve this season? The Mets sit at 46-43 right now and are seen by everybody as an amazing team that has defied low expectations and forced the leauge to take them seriously. The Orioles also sit at 46-43 and have garnered a similar storyline. The A's? You guessed it. 46-43 and no such storyline for Billy Beane. The A's have defied expectations for another terrible season and are playing an impressive three games over .500 with a 20-8 record since June 12th. Maybe the lack of love comes from the tough competition they face in the division. I would say it is basically impossible to consider that the A's could win the AL West but they are well within the hunt with a number of other teams for one of the two wild card spots.

Josh Reddick is having a career year right now currently hitting 268./346/.521 with 20 homers and 8 stolen bags. His 3.7 fWAR is good enough for the top 15 in all baseball. The pitching has been great all year as well but the starters stats do look a bit inflated when examined with defense independent metrics.

Name	ERA	xFIP
Travis Blackley	2.63	3.79
Brandon McCarthy	2.54	4.09
Jarrod Parker	3.07	4.28
Bartolo Colon	3.8	4.18
Tommy Milone	3.54	4.13

Every starter on the team besides Blackley has an ERA under 4 but an xFIP over 4, isn't that veird? Hopefully the A's stellar defense keeps up otherwise we will some of the ERA's shoot through the roof. I hope you enjoyed this public service announcement, next time you are having a conversation about teams having expectation busting years, mention the A's.