Looking back at the absolute lowest moment for the postseason-bound Oakland A’s

The Oakland A’s are back in the postseason, with a scheduled date against the New York Yankees in the AL Wild Card Game. The A’s were aggressively not in the postseason over the past couple seasons. This is a journey that takes us back to those seasons to find the exact moment they bottomed out. We’re not looking for the point when they fell apart; we’re looking for the point when it felt like all the GM’s horses and all the GM’s men would never put the A’s roster back again.

What is the point of this exercise? It exists because it helps you appreciate the result, the journey, the competitive team that exists in the present. Because it’s fun to gawk at teams in their worst moment (and because you know the successful outcome, you can do so guilt free). Because I need to put content on this website. For clicks.

Let us search for the precise moment in time. Let us find: Rock Bottom.

If this is a search for a valley, it’s important to talk about how steep the left cliffside was. It was steep. And jagged. Rolling down the cliffside would lead to lacerations, broken bones, and a concussion at the bottom. A few years ago, the A’s took a running start and hurtled over the side of the cliff. It was almost beautiful.

First we have to understand just how good the A’s were. The 2014 A’s were one of baseball’s best stories, a reminder of everything the front office was supposed to do well. There was the all-star who was acquired in a rebuilding trade (Josh Donaldson) and the all-star who was acquired in a contending trade (Jeff Samardzija). There was the all-star who was acquired in a savvy free-agent strike (Scott Kazmir), the all-star who was drafted and developed perfectly (Sonny Gray), and an all-star who was acquired with a combination of brute force and supreme confidence, shocking the world (Yoenis Cespedes). There was the undervalued all-star found under a rock in the purest A’s fashion (Brandon Moss), and there was even a power-hitting prospect who became an all-star because the A’s realized he was more likely to stay healthy as a pitcher (Sean Doolittle).

The point is that the 2014 A’s had a lot of freaking all-stars.

They controlled first place in the AL West through the trade deadline, but then they started to skid. If you listen to the old-timers at the back of the saloon, they’ll tell you everything was different once the A’s traded Yoenis Cespedes for Jon Lester. If you listen to the rationalists, they’ll tell you that there’s nothing you can do when a team gets as hot as Angels did.

The details aren’t quite as important as the results in this case. On Aug. 25, the A’s were tied for first place. On Sept. 12, they were 11 games back. In the same period of time it takes for milk to go bad, the A’s went from first place to a distant second.

It was OK, though, because they still had the buffer of the wild card. The A’s could still make the postseason, so long as they survived a one-game cage match. And with one out in the bottom of the eighth inning in the 2014 American League Wild Card Game, the A’s were up 7-3. They had their ace on the mound (Lester) and a dynamite closer ready if needed.

The Royals won even though they got exactly one extra-base hit for the rest of the game, which came in the bottom of the 12th. They lashed the A’s with a wet noodle over and over again, as they would do for two straight pennant-winning seasons, and the A’s couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

A month later, the stupid Giants won the World Series.

Two months later, Josh Donaldson was traded to Toronto, where he would win MVP.

Six months later, the A’s assembled a very bad team in Arizona and begin spring training.

Twelve months later, the A’s would finish with their worst record since 1997, the year they traded Mark McGwire and passed on the wonder that would have been.

Twenty-two months later, well, it gets a little messy. It is here, in this moment, that we find the lowest point in the A’s journey.

On Aug. 19, 2016, A’s designated hitter and narc Billy Butler told a representative of a shoe company that third baseman Danny Valencia wore unauthorized cleats. The information jeopardized an endorsement deal, and after the rep left, according to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser, Valencia screamed, “Don’t you ever loud-talk me in front of a rep.”

Say it out loud to yourself. Get as indignant as possible. Do it front of a mirror, maybe. There are few universal truths in this world, but one of them is that “DON’T YOU EVER LOUD-TALK ME IN FRONT OF A REP” will never not be funny.

Butler, for his part, responded with “I can say whatever I want and your bitch ass isn’t going to do anything about it.” This will also never not be funny.

This all led to Valencia punching Butler and giving him a concussion that would keep him out of several games.

On Aug. 19, 2016, at approximately 5:44 p.m., at 37.7516° N, 122.2005° W, Danny Valencia’s fist connected with Billy Butler’s head.

This was the A’s lowest point. After this, everything improved, even if it was impossible to notice for a while.

The fight happened before a Friday night game, in which the A’s were trying to avoid a sixth-straight loss. It would be easy to picture a clubhouse filled with quiet, ashamed baseball players all thinking about the losing streak, but that’s not how baseball works. The clubhouse was filled with normal-seeming guys joking and going about their business, as the losing streak clawed and bit through wires like a rat trapped in the drywall. Then someone yells “DON’T YOU EVER LOUD-TALK ME IN FRONT OF A REP” and there are people rolling around trying to concuss each other.

It’s also the lowest point because what in the hell are Billy Butler and Danny Valencia even doing on the A’s in the first place?

Both Butler and Valencia have a reputation for being somewhere on the dingus-to-jerk spectrum, where the left side is for well-meaning goofballs and the right side is for undeniable assholes. A writer who covered both players told me, “If you had asked me which two teammates were most likely to get in a fight over shoes, I would have said (Butler) and Valencia.” The two players were, at the very least, a poor combination, and it isn’t surprising that something happened.

Valencia was selected off waivers from the Blue Jays just a couple weeks before. He was placed on waivers because either a) the Blue Jays were tired of his excellent 124 OPS+ or b) they were tired of him in general. You can take all the time you want to figure that one out. I’ll be right here.

Now return to the idea that neither player should be on the team in the first place. Valencia was there because he was replacing Brett Lawrie, who had been on the A’s because he was replacing Josh Donaldson, future MVP. The A’s went from an MVP to a misfit to a guy who punched their big-money offseason acquisition, and it happened so damned fast.

That big free agent was probably the biggest enigma of all, though. Billy Butler was the platonic ideal of a DH. He was a lummox of a man who had no business in the field, which meant that the only reason to pay a lot of money for him was if he were a stone-cold slugger — a real thumper. A David Ortiz-type.

That just wasn’t the case, though. Butler hit nine home runs in 603 plate appearances the season before the A’s acquired him. He had a .323 OBP and a slugging percentage under .400 that year, and he couldn’t field. There is no chapter in Moneyball about the hunt for players coming off that kind of season.

No, but there are plenty of words in Moneyball dedicated to the search for dinger-swatting beeflords, which is what the A’s were hoping Butler would be. The conclusion in the book was players like him should be readily available and under-appreciated. It shouldn’t be too hard to find players who could hit for a little power and take a walk, even if they couldn’t do anything else well. You just had to take a basket into the fields and pick a few.

Of course, that philosophy was more effective when the fields were being sprayed with gnarly chemicals that the FDA hadn’t approved. The yields were plentiful then, all right, but in the post-Mitchell Report era, the true beeflords were harder to find. The A’s response in this strange, new era was to throw the bulk of their limited resources at a one-tool player. They steered into the skid and became one of the shortsighted teams that Michael Lewis made fun of.

It didn’t help that Butler was even lacking in intangible tools, with his abilities as a teammate roughly analogous to his abilities as a base stealer.

So to dumb this moment down, here was the main event:

A hard-to-like DH who was given scores of millions after a poor season

vs.

A hard-to-like third baseman who replaced a hard-to-like third baseman who replaced an easy-to-like MVP

There would still be stumbles and pitfalls on the A’s way back to the postseason, but a clubhouse brawl between two dinguses who were on the roster because of assorted front office mistakes? That was as low as they would go.

What makes it perfect is that they didn’t know at the time that this would be the nadir — everyone was bracing for the death submarine to sink even farther into the lightless depths.

The 2018 A’s — who, again, are now very good — are a fascinating hodge-podge of delirious randomness, and I can’t express just how lucky we would all be if they found their way into the World Series.

They have former cast members coming back for a second run (Brett Anderson and Trevor Cahill). They have supremely likable players (Khris Davis, Edwin Jackson, and Stephen Piscotty). They have perhaps the easiest player to watch in the whole danged sport, one of the purest defensive geniuses to play third base since Brooks Robinson (MATT CHAPMAN).

The current A’s are not rolling around on the ground, trying to concuss each other.

They’re thriving, even though nobody expected them to. Even though they’ve been brutalized with a rash of injuries that have targeted their starting rotation, and were accosted by the MLBPA for not spending enough (which is probably fair). They shouldn’t be this good again so quickly, except they are.

And that’s because the A’s are irreparably, irrevocably the A’s. They’re perennially a team seemingly put together by Wreck-Gar, with accumulated driftwood, anachronistic catch phrases from a better time, and hope that it will all coalesce into a winning team.

It has. It did. The A’s are in the postseason again, and they’re somehow positioned to win the World Series that they couldn’t get to in the Hudson/Mulder/Zito years, or the year when they had seven all-stars, or any of the years in between.

They sure needed to crawl through a messy river of foulness to get there, though. Just a couple of years ago, they were at their lowest point. It makes you appreciate just how unlikely this team is.

It makes you feel good for the hardy fans who have stuck around. Even when the A’s were awful, they had a passionate, devoted fan base that was ready to throw down if you talked smack about the team.

What I’m trying to say is you should never loud-talk the A’s in front of their fans. Especially now that they’re getting the team they deserve.