Jeff Samardzija must feel like he’s back with the Cubs. He pitched an eight-inning complete game against the Angels Saturday night, but lost 2-0. The Angels used eight pitchers, pretty much by design, and the Athletics were unable to score off any of them. LAnaheim now leads the AL West by four games and are in very good shape going into September despite the injuries to their pitching staff.

The Athletics season seems backwards to me. The traditional Athletics Moneyball teams started slow. Billy Beane and the front office would figure out the weaknesses of the team, address them, then take off in the second half. This season, the team was playing extremely well as Oakland approached the trade deadline, pitching and hitting well. The front office appeared to decide that they had been a bit lucky with their starting pitching, and replaced three fifths of the staff with higher quality starters. The staff has a 3.54 ERA in August, in line with the rest of the season. They allowed 106 runs in 28 games. The offense, however, has scored just 102 runs.`They are drawing walks, but that’s about it as the team is posting a .224/.304/.351 slash line. Added to that is a bit of bad luck. The runs scored and allowed indicates a 13-15 record instead of a 12-16 record.

Oakland’s process was good. They recognized that they had done well despite their pitching injuries. They concentrated on their starting staff, but luck turned on the offense. Meanwhile, the Angels suffered a horrific injury to their best pitcher, and their starting staff has been incredible since. Sometimes good luck trumps the best team construction and the worst injuries.