Reason for optimism: Fans might not have noticed, but Oakland arguably performed better than the team that won the American League West last year.
Reason for pessimism: Fans did notice that the Athletics had the worst record in the AL and the players the team traded won awards, pennants and World Series rings.
The A's had the worst record in the AL last year, as they were six games clear of the Detroit Tigers. Yet I can make the case, based on the actual output of players, that Oakland not only wasn't the worst team in the AL but also was seventh. The Athletics were a hair above average and even better than the Texas Rangers, who finished 20 games ahead of them in winning the division.
If that seemingly outrageous assertion has any truth to it -- even if you wouldn't rank the teams in the same order -- the 2016 A's are potentially very undervalued. A lot goes into restating last season's results, but here are two starting points, using the Rangers for comparison.
Despite winning 20 more games than the A's, the Rangers outscored their opponents by only 53 runs, which means they were almost six wins better than Oakland. That's substantial, but a 20-game spread suggests something closer to a 190-run difference. That Pythagorean calculation, which yields expected wins, is, of course, based on actual runs scored and allowed. Looking at that component uncovers that Texas allowed four more runs than Oakland, which is curious because the Rangers, who played nearly the exact same opponents as the A's, had very different results against those batters over the course of the season.
There is no question who the better hitting team is and which team you'd expect to score more runs. But these are the results of the batters who faced the pitching staffs of Texas and Oakland. Clearly, by a very, very large margin, the Athletics staff got better results over the 6,100-plus batters each team faced. You'll have to trust my regression work, which is the heart of my cluster luck calculations, but those batter results should have resulted in Oakland allowing 64 fewer runs than Texas -- not the four they actually did. Apply those 60 runs to the Pythag calculation, and you make up another 6.5 wins. All of a sudden, the team with the worst record in the league played better than a team that made the playoffs.
Unfortunately, you can't just close your eyes and bet the "over" this year because this is the Oakland A's, and there are significant roster changes. Encouragingly, on offense at least, they might be better. Yonder Alonso is potentially a perfect fit in Oakland as a left-handed bat at first base to replace the near replacement-level black hole of Ike Davis. Right-handed power was a real need for Oakland, and the A's benefited from Milwaukee's tear-down by acquiring Khris Davis for the cost of a catching prospect they picked up in July for the soon-to-be-free agent Scott Kazmir. This represents an excellent use of assets. Billy Butler has to bounce back from a terrible year as designated hitter, but if he can just put up average Billy Butler numbers, the A's will be sneaky good on offense.
The low-hanging fruit when it comes to year-over-year improvement, however, resides in the bullpen. The A's had the worst bullpen ERA in the AL by a full quarter of a run, with a ghastly 4.63 ERA, which fully explained their 19-35 record in one-run games. Digging deeper, it gets worse, so A's fans might want to get one of those air sickness bags out before they read on. The other 14 teams in the AL won 84 percent of games in which they led after six innings. Oakland went 45-23 for a 66 percent success rate, and its 23 losses were more than double the 11 that the other 14 teams averaged. Just by showing up this year, the revamped bullpen is going to allow a run fewer per nine innings, and that should mean another 50 to 60 runs of improvement.
Most likely, the Athletics are going to take a hit year-over-year in the rotation, so that tempers some of my enthusiasm. Kazmir's 2.38 ERA over 18 starts can't be replicated this year by the new arms, but the team is also replacing a 4.18 ERA year from Jesse Chavez. The A's hope a half-season worth of excellent work from Jesse Hahn and Chris Bassitt is a sign that the increase to full workloads will work out to the blended production lost from Kazmir and Chavez. They are also looking to find in fifth starter Rich Hill some more of the late-career magic they extracted from Kazmir.
Finding himself an MLB starter for the first time since 2009, Hill tore up the minors for Boston last summer before capping his year with four sparkling starts with the Red Sox. That led to a one-year contract with Oakland. Projections aren't going to show anything but a mid-4.00 ERA journeyman, but if last year's production is for real, this could be another of those intriguing Oakland finds. Remember, Kazmir hadn't had a sub-4.00 ERA since 2009, and in 50 starts with Oakland over the past two years, he posted a 3.12 ERA.
I see a lot of similarities to 2012, when the A's were coming off an 88-loss season and were slated to be one of the worst teams in baseball. Then they surged to 94 wins and an AL West crown. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Oakland ended up in first place this year. With a total wins market at 75.5, I enthusiastically support an "over" play.
2016 projection: 84-78 (third in the AL West)
Bet recommendation: Over