It took until Independence Day weekend for the Oakland Coliseum gates to open up.
But, this Fourth of July looked a little different. There were no families packing the stands under the day game sun, no pomp or circumstance. Instead, the Coliseum seats hosted a select few media and staff to witness the start of A’s summer camp.
“I’ve only seen three catchers so far,” manager Bob Melvin prior to the first workouts of the day.
Pitchers and catchers, who arrive a day prior to the rest of the squad, are scheduled for staggered stretch times and workout times. At least the crack of the bat provided some normalcy.
Melvin, closer Liam Hendriks and catcher Sean Murphy shared their thoughts on a strange day.
How are the A’s adapting to the new protocols?
“I have to train myself like you train a dog,” Hendriks said. “Pick a ball up, refrain from going to my mouth, and I usually get a treat after that.”
“Spitting,” Murphy said of the hardest habit to break. “I spit a lot.”
Perhaps the oddest feeling was the lack of camaraderie. Players can’t eat together, talk with each other. The weight room is outside. The card games they played every day for hours prior to first pitch would be no more.
“All of it is weird,” Murphy said.
The importance of staying safe
Reliever Jake Diekman, who is diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, opted to play this season despite being high-risk. Keeping the bubble intact is imperative.
“You do this for yourself, your family, for teammates and their families. And guys like Jake,” Melvin said. “It’s very important for us to take this seriously. It’s only for a few months.”
“It’ll take a bit to get used to,” Hendriks said. “But once you put the fear of god in guys, that this is not only something that can make guys unhealthy, but can theoretically kill some guys on the team, hopefully they’ll take this seriously and suppress the need to get a drink or something on the road.”
Despite having some health risks of his own, Hendriks said he never considered not playing this season.
Pitchers are expected to be on schedule
“If you put me in a game tomorrow, I’ll be ready to go,” Hendriks said.
Hendriks strained his oblique two weeks into quarantine after “trying to throw the ball too hard” in a throwing contest with some fellow pitchers he worked with during the hiatus.
“I was trying to beat Matt Liberatore, the guy with the (St. Louis) Cardinals,” he said.
He had plenty of time in the last months to recuperate and get stretched. He threw to hitters last Friday, he said, including some high school kids in the Bay Area.
Based on conversations Melvin had with the pitching staff, it seems the majority are ready to face live hitting. Most pitchers have been able to keep up their arm strength, too. Just ask Murphy, who caught Frankie Montas’ bullpen.
“My hand is pretty sore,” Murphy said.
With a projected 15 pitchers on the roster, the A’s can get creative with how they deploy their arms.
“A lot of it will have to do with where we feel our starters are,” Melvin said. “We basically have 6-to-5 with (Chris) Bassitt. If we feel like our starters can go out there and give us five innings when the season starts, we can go out there with a five-man rotation. A lot will be decided in the next few weeks depending on health, pitch counts and so forth.”
The rosters might be set
“We have a pretty good idea, barring health issues, what we want to do with the 30 to start already. We probably have a good idea of what 28 and 26 are going to look like, too,” Melvin said.
Here’s a breakdown of our projection for the 30-man roster, though this came before the A’s traded infielder Jorge Mateo to the San Diego Padres. There are 31 players on the 40-man roster due at camp in Oakland — one of those players is Daniel Mengden, who is still on the 60-day IL. Out of options and healthy, Mengden could sneak his way into the roster to give the A’s 15 pitchers. And catcher Jonah Heim could be optioned to the alternate training site or possibly added to the taxi squad.
Will there be more small ball?
The playoff implications riding on every at-bat in this truncated 60-game season could shift how the game is played a bit.
Even new Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim manager Joe Maddon said there could be “more of a baseball playoff methodology” in at bats — more hit-and-runs, bunts, stolen bases.
The A’s practiced bunting prior to the wild card game against the Tampa Bay Rays. Situational hitting was a focus in spring training this season, and A’s assistant hitting coach Eric Martins reiterated that the A’s will make an effort to integrate more small ball in 2020.
“Knowing every game counts, we have to stress that,” he said. “And guys will have to have that situational hitting mindset, whether it’s putting a bunt down, doing what you can to get a guy over.”
Of course, small ball won’t play too prominent a role in the offense, Melvin said. Though, finding ways to sneak some runners around the bases may be more of a factor in tighter games or against particularly hard-throwing closers in extra innings.
