First off, nothing goes worse with bad skill than bad luck and I want to acknowledge that for everything they have may have done wrong recently, the A’s also haven’t had a whole lot of good fortune.
Last night, for example, the bottom of the 1st inning would have ended scoreless had Carlos Beltran’s squibber been 6" closer to Jharel Cotton (who missed it with a valiant dive), 6" closer to Trevor Plouffe, or hit a fraction harder — Plouffe’s throw to 1B missed getting Beltran by a hair. Then in the 4th inning, fractions of seconds prevented Adam Rosales from completing a play in the hole on George Springer that would have kept the A’s in front.