Peter Aiken-USA TODAY Sports
On paper, the Oakland Athletics were supposed to have upgraded their defense this season. Third baseman Brett Lawrie was supposed to commit less errors than Josh Donaldson. Shortstop Marcus Semien had a stronger arm than Jed Lowrie. Sam Fuld and Craig Gentry were going to platoon in center field while Coco Crisp and his weak arm were moved to left. However, it is clear that the A’s sloppy defense is losing them many games.
Oakland currently leads the MLB in errors with a total of 33 in 33 games. Rookie Semien leads the team with nine errors, while Lawrie is not far behind with five. Lawrie has just recently made some throwing errors, and one of those came while he was playing second base, which is not his usual position. Semien has great range, however, his inexperience playing in the major leagues is definitely hurting him right now.
Semien will likely get more days off once Ben Zobrist’s returns from the disabled list. Eric Sogard — whose defense has been pretty solid this season — and Zobrist can cover the middle infield in Semien’s absence. This will hopefully boost the defense in the infield.
Currently, the A’s outfield has incurred nine errors, which is just inexcusable. While Crisp was on the DL, Mark Canha has spent the majority of his playing time in left field. Unfortunately for the Athletics, Canha has trouble playing balls hit deep into the outfield or those that are bounced off the outfield wall, and his throwing accuracy is not the best. It will be interesting to see if Crisp’s return will fix these two issues.
Also, outfielder Sam Fuld has not been his usual self defensively. He has gone from a 0.05 DWAR in 2014 to a -0.01 DWAR this season. This is a dramatic drop for Fuld, who played so well defensively last year for the Athletics. One must factor in that Fuld has never been an everyday starting center fielder for any team before. However, he should be a lot better than he is right now.
With the haphazard pitching coming from the bullpen, the Athletics really do not have room to be sloppy defensively. All of these players are capable of being better. If they cannot fix this issue soon, Oakland will continue to lose games.
