 |
| Will Dunn help the Athletics get out of their offensive funk? Photo credit: AP |
By: Michael Hanley
It was announced this afternoon that the Athletics had acquired White Sox slugger Adam Dunn in exchange for minor league pitcher Nolan Sanburn. Its a trade that gives you a sense of just how desperate GM Billy Beane and the Athletics organization are to fix their offensive woes in time for the start of the postseason.
The A’s are receiving a player in Adam Dunn that has had up to this point an average season to say the least. Coming into today, Dunn is batting .220 with 20 HRs and 54 RBIs, pretty solid numbers especially considering he is on a team that is fourteen games under the .500 mark. That type of production is sorely needed in an Oakland lineup that has had all sorts of trouble generating consistent offense in the month of August.
This month has proven to be a very painful and frustrating one for the Athletics to go through. Through today, they are just 12-16 in this month, hitting a weak .224 as a team and only averaging 3.6 runs per game, a far cry from the first couple of months when Oakland was clicking as a lineup and averaging 5 runs per game and pacing all of baseball in runs scored and home runs hit.
It has caused the margin of error for their starting rotation and bullpen to be cut down to nearly zero,putting more pressure on the staff to bring their A game each turn out and only gave up one or two runs in order to keep the team within a game. No longer can they be a little off their game and rely on the offense to bail them out and pound out the hits and runs. With that pressure has come pitching that has slipped a bit from earlier in the season.
Adam Dunn will most likely be slotted into the middle of the A’s lineup, possibly in the cleanup role behind Josh Donaldson. Its a telling sign that a team like Oakland is nearly to September 1 and have to go and trade for a cleanup hitter/power bat since they do not have one on the roster that is firing on all cylinders.
It makes you go back to the trade for Lester at the deadline and wonder what could have been had they decided to stand pat and keep Cespedes on the team and in the middle of the order more importantly.They were rolling along just fine with Cespedes in the lineup and since the trade have seemed like a completely different team.
Now is Adam Dunn better than what the Athletics currently have as options for middle of the lineup bats? Yes and he can provide some stability and production from that position. The concern is the high strikeout rate he has racked up this year, striking out 132 times already and walking only 65 times. The Athletics for years have been a team that places a great importance on getting on base via the walk ,so Dunn does not fit that profile particularly well.
Dunn though is being brought to Oakland to hit home runs clearly and he has made a career of doing just that. The question becomes just how many more does he have in that bat for this season since the A’s need everyone they can possibly get.
As for the White Sox are getting a pitching prospect that is considered not to be of the elite kind according to scouts. Sanburn is a 23 year old that posted a 3-1 record with a 3.28 ERA, 73 strikeouts in 71 ⅓ innings pitched this season for High-A Stockton.
Follow me on Twitter at: @Magic20099
