Mid-Week Notes After A Roller Coaster Ride Of A Big Win

If you can’t do better than whiff 3 times with the bases loaded and nobody out, what can you do? Apparently, win the game the next inning. 25 years ago the A’s celebrated Cinco de Mayo with a rollicking 17-16 loss but in 2025 fortunes smiled just enough for the A’s to slink away 1 game out of 1st place and 4 games north of .500.

Here are some thoughts as the A’s prepare for game 2 of a telling 12-game stretch against the Mariners, Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants...

Bullpen

The bullpen’s depth has been much tested of late and the depth has come up huge. Grant Holman would be considered the #4 reliever out of the pen and he has twice gone 2 innings with only a bloop RBI hit standing in the way of 4 scoreless. Mitch Spence has gotten key outs, including last night when he retired the only batter he faced, in the 8th inning with the go-ahead run at 3B. Hogan Harris scoffed at the ghost runner and stranded him in the 11th.

It’s too early in the season to push your plus relievers unduly and so I am hoping the A’s can — or will anyway — give Mason Miller the rest of the series off. He not only threw 28 pitches Saturday and 27 more Monday, they were particularly high stress pitches as he struggled with his command and had to try to pitch out of trouble.

Coupled with Thursday’s off day, Miller can have 3 straight days of rest to reset and even though this is a matchup with the team ahead of you in the standings I think Miller should be given until Friday before asked to pitch again. It helps that Tyler Ferguson and Justin Sterner have both been sensational and Sterner got Monday’s game off.

As for Holman, he’s been good but there’s one pitch that scares me: he is throwing the splitter for a strike a lot of the time and what I notice is that while his splitter has some diving action below the zone, in the strike zone it looks pretty hittable — and we know what can happen to 87 MPH pitches over the plate if they don’t have sharp and late movement.

The “splitter for a strike” is a fine “get me over” pitch in a fastball count, but I would caution Holman not to lean on it very much because it could get tattooed and he’s currently pitching in a lot of games where the margin for error is razor thin.

Regarding Spence, someone tell him and Shea Langeliers that it’s a bad sign when I can call for a pitch before they do. Every time Spence gets to 0-2, and generally the first time he gets to 2 strikes, he throws the big curve. Too predictable, mix it up.

Luis Urias

If you had to pick a team MVP it would probably have to Jacob Wilson, but if you like the “best kept secret” wing Urias is a great call. Following his 3 for 4 game last night with 3 hard hit singles, Urias’ season batting line now stands at .277/.364/.508 (147 wRC+) and he continues to play errorless ball at 2B, where he has been particularly strong on the DP pivot.

Making his presence all the more crucial, of course, is Zack Gelof’s injuries, first surgery to remove the hamate bone and now a “stress reaction” (I have those every time we whiff with the bases loaded) in his rib.

To put Urias’ performance in perspective, in his spectacular 2023 debut Gelof hit .267/.337/.504 (132 wRC+) so Urias is actually hitting a touch better on all fronts, and playing strong defense, essentially picking up where Gelof left off in 2023.

What To Do With Andujar

This is a legitimate conundrum, even if it’s in the “nice problem to have” category. Andujar is batting .315/.351/.427 with an 11.6% K rate is part of why these 2025 A’s, in contrast to last year’s team and the ones before it, make a lot of contact and have an offense that is deep from 1-9.

But spots for Andujar are limited. He is a poor LFer whose spot has been taken over by Tyler Soderstrom. He can play 1B, but that now belongs to Nick Kurtz. His best position is DH, but Brent Rooker has a stranglehold on it and also plays LF as his fielding position.

So a couple times now, Mark Kotsay has stuck Andujar at 3B, which was his original position and isn’t his position anymore for a reason. So far in 2 games Andujar has only had to try to field one ground ball, which he promptly clanked for an E5.

This workaround is fine so long as no balls are ever hit his way, which was the case Monday night for the 9 innings he was over there. But while you want his bat in the lineup for sure, and options for getting him in there don’t abound, the A’s need to recognize that Andujar is a TBINO: A Third Baseman In Name Only.

Over any time, Andujar will hurt you at 3B more than he can help you at bat. JJ Bleday presents this problem in CF, but as poor a CFer as Bleday is, Andujar is much worse 3Bman. You can’t weaken the outfield and the infield that much and fancy yourself a contender. They haven’t created enough runs to overcome a Bad News Bears defense, and that’s what you’ll see if the A’s push their luck with the Andujar-Bleday 3B-CF parlay more than once in a blue moon.

The answer? Probably a bit of a rotation where Rooker, Soderstrom, and Kurtz each get a day off every 10 games or so giving Andujar 3 starts and many pinch hitting chances, until the inevitable injury thrusts Andujar into an every day role.

There are some thoughts to ponder and discuss on this Seis de Mayo before Jeffrey Springs battles Emerson Hancock at 7:05pm with 1st place on the line...