Oakland Athletics end another losing ’09 season

The Oakland A’s finished last in the AL West with a 75-87 record, the only team in the division with a sub-.500 record. The A’s had a pretty good second half of the 2009 season, but inconsistency early and in the middle ruined their hopes of making the playoffs. The A’s put their success in the hands of very young players almost every season; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. The perception is that the A’s are a small to medium-sized club that cannot compete with the “big guys”, for example, the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Los Angeles Angels.

Jack Cust jumped from a few different teams before landing in Oakland: Cust led the team with 25 home runs but had a low average of just .240 in 149 games played. Kurt Suzuki leads the team with 88 RBI. Overall, the A’s just couldn’t score runs just plain old.

No A’s pitcher who won more than 10 games had a winning record. Brett Anderson went 11-11 with a 4.06 ERA and 146 strikeouts. Trevor Cahill had a 10-13 record with a 4.13 ERA with just 90 strikeouts.

Developing young talent is what the A’s do very well; that may take longer than fans would like to wait. As the team stands now, the A’s won’t be a playoff team compared to the rest of the American League. The LA Angels are a much better team and the Seattle Mariners are also a couple of steps ahead of the A’s.

Perhaps the A’s’ philosophy should change in the near future if the A’s hope to win a World Series. The A’s “small market mentality” won’t win them anything because they just don’t have the talent to do it. The A’s are counting on the hope that the young talent will help them win an AL West title in the coming years.