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“A lot of guys don’t want to come to Oakland,” said Melvin, a Bay Area native. “We give free-agent offers, and they don’t want to come to Oakland. Khris Davis wants to be in Oakland; Jed Lowrie wants to be in Oakland. And then we have a group of guys that are proud to be Oakland A’s because that’s the system they came up in. It’s good chemistry.”
The on-field formula is simple enough: power hitters and power relievers. The A’s lead the majors in home runs on the road, and the setup man Lou Trivino has been a sturdy bridge to Treinen, who came to Oakland from Washington last summer — with the top starting prospect Jesus Luzardo — for relievers Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson.
The question now is whether the A’s can resist the temptation to promote Trivino to closer and sell high on Treinen, who would appeal to any team but especially to one like Boston or Cleveland, whose closers are unsigned past this season. A wild-card berth, Forst suggested, was a powerful incentive for the front office.
“Any chance to be in a wild-card game is precious,” Forst said. “You don’t give that opportunity away just because you’re ahead of schedule or didn’t expect to be here. We’ve been through cycles here from ’07 to ’11 and the last few years that you’d do anything to be back in that race. So when you’re there, you don’t just say, ‘Well, we didn’t expect this. Let’s think about next year.’ We’ll keep that in mind.”
In the big picture, though, it is business as usual for the A’s. While their executives have settled into modern offices in downtown Oakland, attendance a few miles away at the Coliseum ranks 28th in the majors. The A’s are opening the football seats in faraway center field for Saturday’s game with the Giants — the first time they have sold those seats in 13 years — but a new venue is still far off. After years of fruitless haggling over building in San Jose, they have now targeted 2023 for a new home somewhere in Oakland.
Without a site or a stadium deal, the A’s will remain in a precarious spot, like the elephant balancing on a baseball on their jersey sleeves. They’re not supposed to be where they are, but somehow, quite improbably, they make it work.
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