A Merciless End To The Oakland A's 2022 Season
Today, we look at how the Oakland A's fared this season, touch on a couple notable points from the team over the past month, and start to ponder what's next for the team.
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Pregame Pepper - A’s Banter
Leading Off
2022 Oakland A’s Season Review
By Rich Campbell
The 2022 season has mercifully come to an end for the Oakland Athletics.
Living through the first year of a teardown after losing their manager Bob Melvin and stars (and 2022 playoff participants) Mark Canha, Matt Chapman, Matt Olson, Starling Marte, Chris Bassitt, and Sean Manaea made for a tough season. In many ways, not a lot of progress was made. It is still unclear whether young players acquired in those offseason deals like Christan Pache and Kevin Smith, who were both in the Opening Day line-up, are even major leaguers.
Mark Kotsay took over as manager but was saddled with such a bad team that it is impossible to determine whether he is a good manager or a bad one.
The team was near the bottom in every offensive category. The only two players with RC+ over the league average were catcher Sean Murphy (+122) and outfielder/first baseman Seth Brown (+116). In the rotation, only Cole Irvin pitched 150 innings. The bullpen was mostly rookies who, as expected, were inconsistent.
Whether this season was the low point of the rebuild or the start of a years-long morass is a question that will not likely be answered until the next generation of A’s comes up through the minors. Fans are hoping Tyler Soderstrom, Zach Gelof, and others do not turn out to be the next Franklin Baretto: years of minor league hype with no payoff after arriving in Oakland.
As with many fan bases, the only option is to wait until next year.
Record Recap: The A’s had a record of 50-85 when we last checked in and went 10-17 down the stretch to finish the year at 60-102. This season marked the A’s first 100-loss campaign since the 1979 108-loss debacle.
Interestingly, the A’s had winning records for the next two years after ‘79. Of course, Rickey Henderson arrived in that terrible 1979 season and blossomed into a superstar over the next two years. This year’s team did not boast a rookie that looked to be a surefire everyday player, much less a future Hall of Famer.
Who Is the New Guy? With such a young team this year, this space will focus on a new player each month. Conner Caple joined the big-league club late in the year and impressed in a small sample size of 40 plate appearances, slashing .371/.425/.600. The 25-year-old outfielder plucked from the Cardinals off the waiver wire on September 9 has at least guaranteed himself a spot in spring training 2023.
Old Guys Report: Tip of the hat to Stephen Vogt who announced his retirement during the last week of the season. On the season’s final day, he hit a memorable home run to cap off his playing career. Though, as I wrote for Forbes back in 2016, I would not be surprised if Vogt becomes a manager.
That same day marked the end of former A’s catcher Kurt Suzuki’s career as well. Suzuki spent seven seasons in Oakland during his long career. On the next to last day of the year, Suzuki started for the Angels and left the game after one pitch to a warm ovation. On the last day of the year, Suzuki served as the Angels’ de facto manager, perhaps foreshadowing his future career.
It would not be surprising to see Vogt and Suzuki leading MLB teams in the future.
Coming Up: The offseason is underway. Next month we will look at the current state of the roster and how it may be addressed this winter.
Rich Campbell is a Marketing Professor at Sonoma State University by day and A’s fan by night. He has previously been a sports business contributor at Forbes.com and his academic writing has appeared in Sport Marketing Quarterly. You can find him on Twitter @RichCampbellPhD.