Dave Paisley

Man, what a slow start after Labor Day. I think I’m still having trouble getting my arms wrapped around the idea of no baseball strike. It’s just odd that the two sides came to an agreement without any real last minute histrionics. And although it came down to the wire, it all ended amicably enough. Maybe the two sides finally did see that 3.5 billion dollars is a good bit of change and there are worse things in the world than trying to figure out how to divvy it up.

Oh well, there goes the "stupid strike" rant.

So what’s left? I’m not really that excited about too much right now. There are two really strong looking teams in each league, so the jockeying for playoff position by the lesser teams seems a bit underwhelming. There’s the Oakland winning streak of course, which just hit 20 as I started this article, on yet more bottom of the ninth heroics. Scott Hatteberg just homered to nudge the A’s into a 12-11 win after Tim Hudson and the bullpen had squandered an 11 run lead. How many more times can the A’s pull off this kind of miracle?

To be honest, it doesn’t really matter until October, because with this winning streak they’ve all but clinched a playoff spot. Even a massive collapse would hardly drop them past Seattle, now seven games back. In fact, with Seattle and Boston both firmly stuck in reverse gear, the AL playoff picture is slowly setting in concrete.

The streak is an interesting subject, though, now that it’s reached the magical 20. Of the 20 games, the A’s have won three by one run, five by two runs, five by three runs and the remaining seven by six runs or more. They’ve only scored in double digits three times in that span, including the 12 runs they scored in Wednesday’s 12-11 win.

They’ve only shut out their opponents twice in the 20 games, winning game 2 of the streak 1-0 against the White Sox and game 14 by a 6-0 score against Cleveland.

In the 20 games, the A’s have scored 141 runs and conceded just 64. Using the Pythagorean estimate, they should generally win about 17 of the twenty games. Indeed, of the first 16 games in the streak, the starting pitchers won 15 of them (Zito 4, Hudson 4, Lidle 3, Mulder 3 Harang 1), with only one bullpen win going to Jim Mecir. The last four have all been bullpen wins, the last three all to Billy Koch on bottom of the ninth heroics.

Does this mean that the A’s are running out of steam, what with all the late heroics required? Maybe. It’s certainly noticeable that their streak has been against pretty bad teams apart from the Twins (Toronto (2 games), White Sox (3), Cleveland (4), Detroit (3), Kansas City (5)). And starting on Friday, they’re on the road against those Twins, followed by a four game series at Anaheim. I’ll be really impressed if the streak lasts that long. Still, as previously noted, it won’t have to for the A's to breeze into the playoffs.

Well, let’s just hope for the rest of the American League’s sake it’s over by next week.

So what's the best streak you can recall? Dave Paisley's not counting Ray Stevens' infamous novelty song, but you might. Send suggestions to: drdjp@strikethree.com.

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