Barber: Somehow, A's starters outpitching their relievers

OAKLAND - The A's are a weird team these days. And not because they're wildly entertaining playoff contenders who routinely ply their trade in a two-thirds-empty ballpark.

The weirdest thing about the A's right now is that their starting pitchers are better than their relief pitchers. It's bizarre, when you consider the personnel involved.

Consider the Oakland bullpen.

“I was in Anaheim, and I just looked down the bench in the bullpen,” reliever Lou Trivino said after the Mariners' 2-0 extra-innings win Wednesday. “I was like ‘Holy crap.' Just the faces that we have, it's incredible.”

Like Blake Treinen, one of the bright new closers in the game, now with 32 saves in 36 opportunities this season. Like Fernando Rodney, the newest member of the A's, a guy with 325 career saves who has been reduced to the role of setup man. Like Jeurys Familia, who led the National League in saves just two years ago and will probably lead the New York Mets in that statistic in 2018, though he is now hurling in Oakland.

Filling out the A's pen are Trivino, Ryan Buchter, Shawn Kelley, Yusmeiro Petit and Emilio Pagan. Not a stiff in the bunch. The Giants' relievers were the unsung stars of their even-year World Series titles to begin this decade, but I don't remember a local bullpen that could match the depth of the current A's.

The sheer numbers of the Oakland relief corps give manager Bob Melvin options that few other managers enjoy. He can yank his starter on the guy's third time through the opposing lineup even if that starter is pitching well, figuring his expiration date is approaching. He can mix and micro-manage the individual matchups like he's Match.com. He can, as one example, send Trivino - a hard-throwing, late-inning type - to the bump for a single batter, as he did Wednesday when Trivino got Mitch Haniger to end the eighth inning.

Yes, Melvin has a luxury of riches. The only problem is that the luxury is wearing thin. Lately, the A's pen is more gold plate than solid gold.

Last Friday in Anaheim, starter Brett Anderson left after five innings with a 3-2 lead, and the helpers couldn't hold it; Trivino gave up two runs and took the loss. On Sunday, starter Trevor Cahill left with an 8-4 lead in the fifth inning, and the Angels roared back against the bullpen before the A's escaped with an 8-7 win. Against Seattle on Monday, Oakland was up 7-1 when starter Sean Manaea checked out in the eighth inning; Familia couldn't throw strikes and the A's wound up with a nervous 7-6 victory.

And then there was Wednesday. Anderson was incredible. The sinkerball thrower induced 15 ground-ball outs in 7? innings. He gave up only five hits, and the first three were mild grounders; two of them didn't even leave the infield.

It's not like the relievers were awful against the Mariners. But nothing came easy for them, and Petit was tagged with the loss after light-hitting Dee Gordon clocked a two-run homer against him in the top of the 12th.

The lesson: This is all a work in progress. Melvin, pitching coach Scott Emerson and Oakland's shiny new collection of relief pitchers are figuring out the sequences as they go - who's the right man for the mound at any given time, against any given batter.

“Even though the talent is through the roof, you're not gonna have a 0.00 ERA at the end of the year,” Trivino said. “You're not gonna strike everyone out. … I don't think it's any indication that anyone's slumping.”

Fortunately for the A's, their million-dollar bullpen keeps getting bailed out by their 10-cent starting rotation.

Anderson's gem continued a run of incredible work by the starters. Over the past 14 games, Anderson, Cahill, Manaea, Edwin Jackson and Mike Fiers have combined to go 8-1 with a cumulative ERA of 1.84 and a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.3-to-1. The starters' WHIP (walks plus hits per innings pitched) in that time frame is 0.972. Those are All-Star numbers.

It isn't just that no one saw this recent run of excellence coming. Nobody could even have imagined these five men would come together to form an MLB rotation in 2018.

Anderson and Cahill both had prior stints in Oakland, but that was a long time ago. Cahill's most recent stop before he re-signed with the A's was in Kansas City, where he had an 8.22 ERA in 10 games last season.

Anderson had an ERA of 6.34 in 2017, splitting time between the Cubs and Blue Jays. That was an improvement over 2016, when he had a preposterous 11.91 mark with the Dodgers.

Jackson has worn more uniforms than a Hollywood character actor; the A's are his 13th MLB team.

Fiers won a World Series ring with the Astros last year, but hardly pitched at all in the postseason after flaming out at the end of August.

Of the current five starters, only Manaea began the 2018 season on the A's active roster. Cahill, Anderson and Jackson were all in the minor leagues.

And yet here they are, looking like the reincarnation of the 1972 A's that were led by Catfish and Vida, or the 2001 A's powered by the Big Three.

“It's crazy how the game of baseball works,” Jackson told me after Wednesday's game. “Once things are going well, the vibes around the clubhouse are all positive, and everyone is feeding off of everybody else's positive play. When your team is on a roll, everyone wants to go out and everyone wants to do their part.”

Considering the succession of sparking starts, I asked Jackson if it was a case of no one wanting to be the guy who messed up and broke the string. He said I was approaching it wrong.

“See, I feel like instead of looking at not being the one to have the bad outing, it's like, ‘Let me follow it up.' It's just how you put things in perspective to be the difference-maker,” Jackson said. “Obviously, no one wants to be the weakest link. But once people are rolling, it's like friendly competition.”

It's hard to imagine the rest of 2018 will continue in this direction for the A's. The question is which oddity will fall first. Will the bullpen become the lock-down unit everyone expects it to be? Or will the charmed starters turn back into toads? Or both?

It will be fun to see how it develops. And it will continue to be a challenge for Melvin and Emerson. After 121 games, they still aren't sure exactly what they have in their pitchers, or how exactly to deploy them. It's crazy how the game of baseball works.

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.