{"id":101723,"date":"2025-06-07T01:41:40","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T05:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=101723"},"modified":"2025-06-07T01:42:25","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T05:42:25","slug":"athletics-home-run-pitching-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/06\/07\/athletics-home-run-pitching-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Athletics&#8217; Home Run Problems Big Component of 2-20 Skid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With ballpark dimensions of 403 feet to center field, 325 feet to right, and 330 to left in the heat of Sacramento, baseballs will fly in <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/05\/25\/trouble-sacramento-problems-pile-up\/\" target=\"_self\">Sutter Health Park<\/a>. Unfortunately for the Athletics, their offensive power can\u2019t keep up with the amount of home runs allowed by the pitching staff. The A\u2019s offense has hit 23 home runs since May 14th, while the pitching staff has allowed 50 home runs, 17 more than any other team.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In that time, the A\u2019s have gone 2-20. Their pitching stats rank near the bottom in many categories, but one area where they are the worst in the league is home runs allowed. The A\u2019s have had a 2.36 HR\/9 since May 14th, while the second-highest HR\/9 is 1.54 by the Los Angeles Dodgers. It isn\u2019t just a Sutter Health Park problem either, as on the road, the A\u2019s HR\/9 is higher than it is at home. This <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/05\/31\/athletics-youth-movement-in-full-swing\/\" target=\"_self\">young A&#8217;s team<\/a> simply can\u2019t keep the ball in the yard.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Jeffers takes his job as DH very seriously! <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/b654M9JvZe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/b654M9JvZe<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Minnesota Twins (@Twins) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Twins\/status\/1930447524336226575?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 5, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Athletics Giving Up Too May Homers in Losing Skid<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One potential cause for the Athletics&#8217; home run problem is most of their pitchers struggle to keep the ball on the ground. Since May 14th, of the 14 pitchers to throw at least five innings for the team, only three have a GB\/FB ratio above 1.0, and no one who\u2019s thrown 10 innings has one above 1.0. The reason allowing fly balls can be detrimental for a pitching staff is that MLB batters have a .226 wOBA and 40 wRC+ on ground balls compared to a 120 wRC+.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This issue is most apparent in the starting rotation. JP Sears and Jacob Lopez both have a 4.2 HR\/9, with Sears having 0.49 GB\/FB and Lopez having a 0.19 GB\/FB, during the A\u2019s skid. Jeffrey Springs has had a 0.89 GB\/FB and a 2.1 HR\/9, and Gunnar Hoglund has had 0.91 GB\/FB and a 3.9 HR\/9.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With how many pitches are being hit in the air, balls are going to find themselves leaving the yard, but what makes matters worse, is A\u2019s pitchers aren\u2019t getting weak contact either. As a team, A\u2019s pitchers have the highest Barrel% at 13.6%, are tied with the Arizona Diamondbacks for the highest Average Exit Velocity at 90.8, and second highest HardHit% at 44.0%, since May 14th. Hard contact and fly balls are a recipe for disaster for pitchers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Need More Grounders<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The sinker is one pitch option to induce ground balls, and can still produce good results for a pitcher even when often hit hard. Astros pitcher Framber Valdez is a clear example of this, as despite routinely having a high HardHit%, he\u2019s still a top-of-the-rotation arm because he has a career 3.21 GB\/FB.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since May 14th, A\u2019s pitchers have combined to throw a sinker 11.1% of the time, which ranks 23rd in MLB. Of the sinkers thrown by A\u2019s pitchers in that time, they have 95 Stuff+ on them, tied for second worst. Severino has an effective sinker, with a 4 run value, and he is the only starter on the staff to not allow a home run since May 14th. Outside of him, no other A\u2019s pitcher has a sinker with a positive run value. For the starting rotation, Hoglund and Sears have a sinker, but Hoglund has a 9.1 Barrel\/PA% on it and Sears only throws it 2.1% of the time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The situations where Athletics pitchers are allowing home runs also aren\u2019t doing the team any favors. Since May 14th, the A\u2019s also have the highest HR\/9 with runners in scoring position at 2.2, with the second highest being 1.6. It gets even worse in higher-pressure situations, as the A\u2019s have a 3.0 HR\/9 with runners in scoring position. In high-leverage situations, the A\u2019s have a 2.3 HR\/9, and in medium leverage, have a 2.7 HR\/9.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this time span, the A\u2019s have faced the most batters and have the second highest BB%, so their pitchers are very often pitching with runners on base. If the A\u2019s want to end their 2-20 skid, they need to keep the ball in the yard.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: \u00a9 John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With ballpark dimensions of 403 feet to center field, 325 feet to right, and 330 to left in the heat of Sacramento, baseballs will fly in Sutter Health Park. Unfortunately for the Athletics, their offensive power can\u2019t keep up with the amount of home runs allowed by the pitching staff. The A\u2019s offense has hit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5554,"featured_media":101731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1071],"tags":[627,4918,3931,5569,988,69],"class_list":["post-101723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-mlb","tag-al-west","tag-gunnar-hoglund","tag-jeffrey-springs","tag-jp-sears","tag-luis-severino","tag-mlb"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5554"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101723"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101732,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101723\/revisions\/101732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}