How Athletics Can Change Series Trajectory vs. Twins

Gage Jump simply has not played up to his hype after an amazing first half of the season. With him taking the mound in Game 2, this is a perfect opportunity to turn things around. And while he has had great starts since the break, most recently vs. the Red Sox, where he threw 6.0 innings and struck out 11, he has yet to find consistency outside of being consistently bad.

In his last seven starts, Jump is 2-4 with an ugly 6.75 ERA and 1.83 WHIP. This drop in production has hurt the Athletics big time. With him starting after the All-Star break as the first pitcher, he will, by default, pitch the most innings. Because of this, Jump needs a very solid game, not just to turn the series around, but to potentially turn the Athletics' season around.

Offense Needs To Wake Up Early

There are plenty of pros to a team getting the bats hot early. For one, it helps out your team's starting pitcher and could possibly shorten the other team's starter, resulting in an early bullpen call. Even so, the Athletics really have not had trouble accomplishing this recently, but it was visible in the series opener.

With Henry Bolte and Jeff McNeil easily the best one-two punch between both teams since the break, they will be responsible for facilitating this. The good news is that with Bolte's speed, the Athletics really just need to get him into scoring position via an early bunt. If this happens, the Athletics will be able to take the lead before the Twins have even faced five batters.

Simplify Bullpen Moves

Even though the Athletics bullpen is ranked last in MLB and was part of the reason for the slow series opener, there is enough talent to make it work. It just needs to be used well. Mark Kotsay loves analytics when evaluating who to bring out. In theory, this should work, but we have seen this thinking backfire frequently.

Take Elvis Alvarado: in a game against the Royals, he would get through the seventh inning flawlessly, with a low pitch count. Kotsay opted to take him out of the game, which resulted in a complete collapse. This could have easily been avoided if he had stayed in until the cracks started to show. This needs to be the case for every pitcher to finish the series. If it is not broken, do not fix it. But if it is cracked, fix it.