Did The A’s Infect The Red Sox With Whatever Is Wrong With Them?

It is not news to you that the West Sacramento Athletics are deeply un-good.

Even when they led the AL West in April and May, they somehow managed to do so while maintaining a solidly negative run differential.

But since their last day at .500, on June 19, they have been, by both advanced and less-advanced metrics, Galactically Ass.

Their three best hitters, Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers, and Brent Rooker, are hurt, their pitching struggles to be shambolic, and as a result they have lost 35 of their last 44 games, a winning percentage of .205.

Over a full season, that would be the fifth-worst in professional baseball history of any team that ever played a subsequent season, including the first year of the Phillies (1883), and five Negro League teams, including the New York Black Yankees, whose last six years were a cumulative 42-187.

There.

We spared you a gratuitous Cleveland Spiders reference.

You're welcome.

But while the A's have been baseball's foremost adherents of zombie baseball since that date, that is a role they have played before.

More notable is the fact that they may have also gotten a few bites in against the best team in baseball in that span, the Boston Red Sox, simply through physical proximity.

It is too early to say whether the Red Sox are showing signs of infection, but their recent stumbles are further proof that, as a general rule, it is poor hygiene to hang around the A's.

The A's and their opponents should both be forced to wear masks, and if the owners weren't perfectly fine with an industrial pandemic that thins out the union membership, they would be.