A's have opportunity to build reputation as elite team in MLB playoffs

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The A's playoff chase did not end with the traditional cathartic bang, but it came close enough given the circumstances.
 
Oh, they got in all right. It’s just that their postgame celebration after beating Seattle, 7-3, was a bit muted (wet but controlled is probably the best way to put it) by the fact that the achievement had been achieved in pregame. Tampa Bay finally ended the last shredlet of doubt by expiring at home to the New York Yankees four hours earlier, and the value of the A's winning was mostly to stay on New York’s considerable heels.
 
That, ultimately, is the only discordant note the A’s have played in the last 100 days – they didn’t get to do the deed themselves.
 
In fact, they not only didn’t do the deed themselves, they watched the team they’ve been chasing do it for them and stay an arm’s length ahead of the Oaklands for the right to host the wild card game next Wednesday. They still trail New York by the equivalent of two games with five to play, so there is no benefit to kicking back and soaking anything in. The work is done when the work is done, and this work is not yet done.
 
But it’s damned fine work by any measure.
 
The Elephants have made themselves the fourth-best team in baseball in half a season by not shrinking before the task thrust upon them, by never letting up as they continued to consume starting pitchers at a rate that should be found in last-place teams, by being the equivalent in those 100 days of a 113-win team.
 
It therefore becomes impossible to make a compelling case that these are merely plucky overachievers getting hot at the right time. Overachievers don’t do this for 3½ months. They have earned the right to walk with the game’s kings.
 
Now, they have to prove they can run with them. That’s October’s task.
 
It’s perfectly acceptable to marvel at the Oakland turnaround, not just from their middling start this year but the three years of uninspiring sub-mediocrity before that. It’s fine to be amazed at the way they chewed through their own starting rotation, in some cases more than once, and still ended up a formidable team. It’s normal to note that they were a mediocre team at home until mid-June, then won three-quarters of their games at the grim Carpathian castle known as the Coliseum.
 
Why, it’s even acceptable to mock them for their modest home attendance, as though that has anything to do with what the roster did before all those empty seats.
 
But they earned all of it, and now all that accomplishment looks to get them the rawest deal of all the playoff paths – a game in the Bronx against the more solidly built Yankees, and then if that goes well, a series against the team with the best record this year and one of the 15 best in the game’s history by winning percentage in Boston.
 
And they’ll be the team people know the least about because, well, because people seek out only that knowledge they want to possess, especially when it comes to baseball. They don’t have a Cy Young or MVP candidate, or even a Rookie of the Year. They have the likely Manager of the Year in Bob Melvin, a potential Mariano Rivera Award winner in Blake Treinen, and two Gold Glove candidates in first baseman Matt Olson and third baseman Matt Chapman. They may even have an Executive of the Year in Billy Beane.
 
But they also have that twitchy postseason history over the past 25 years, in which they have carried teams as strong and solid and in some ways deeper and more complete and still have been left behind by better teams with better players doing better things when the things mattered most. That history may not be this team’s, but this team is wearing the laundry of those other teams, and that’s just how history works.
 
So the A’s for all their good deeds still have a national reputation to build, and this is that opportunity. Whether it is done in Oakland or New York, Boston or Houston, they are on the verge of becoming a national team again, of being the 2013 Warriors en route to a glory nobody could imagine even now.
 
Or they could fail, in which case all they’ve done is serve notice that they are badasses in training. That would do as well given their modest origins in spring.
 
But if they’ve gone to the trouble of becoming this good, they might as well stay and enjoy the décor awhile. The A’s are either going to be the real deal, or they’re going to be close enough to see the landmarks and read the signs that led the way.

 

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