Raise your hand if you thought the Oakland A’s would be one game out of first place on Aug. 23.

Liar.

The A’s have been the story of the American League — if not all of baseball — as they enter this four-game set with the Twins 25 games over .500 (76-51).

It hasn’t always been this way for the A’s this season. Most preseason predictions had them threatening to lose 90 games in a competitive AL West, and for much of the season, they were treading water while Houston and Seattle raced to the head of the class. The Angels couldn’t be ruled out as contenders with the duo of Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, and even the Rangers made some moves to tighten up an iffy rotation.

June 17 was a pivotal day for the A’s.

They’ve had eight walk-off wins this season — five since, and just two beforehand — and this was No. 3. It came against the Angels, with a Jonathan Lucroy single driving home Jed Lowrie in the bottom of the 11th to give the A’s a 6-5 win.

That win pushed the A’s to 36-36, and they haven’t spent a day at or below .500 since. In fact, they’ve gone a stunning 40-16, good for a .714 winning percentage. That’s the same as playing at a 115-win pace over an entire season.

For added context, the Boston Red Sox are baseball’s best team at 89-39 coming into Thursday night. That’s a winning percentage of .695.

Oakland going nuts in the second half is not a new thing. The Moneyball A’s of 2002 went a respectable 50-38 in the first half, then blew the doors off the barn in the second half by going 53-21.

That’s a .716 winning percentage. Almost spooky, isn’t it?

The happy ending to that 2002 season as far as Twins fans are concerned is that it was that bunch of upstarts — the first playoff for the club since the 1991 World Series winner — who upset the A’s in five games on the way to losing to the eventual champion Anaheim Angels in the ALCS.

Anyway, as of this writing, the playoff odds for the A’s are 81.7 percent. Before the season they were 9.2 percent. Where were they at the beginning of each month?

May 1 – 8.2 percent

June 1 – 12.3 percent

July 1 – 7.6 percent

August 1 – 46.4 percent

August has clearly been the best month of the season for this iteration of the A’s, as they’ve gone 13-5 to this point. The Moneyball bunch, for what it’s worth, went an unthinkable 24-4 in August that year, including a 20-game winning streak.

Oh yeah, that was also ended by the Twins, as Brad Radke twirled a six-hit shutout at the Metrodome on Sept. 6.

And, in case you were curious, the Twins opened the year with playoff odds of 28.7 percent. That’s a little over triple the odds the A’s had, and as of now, they’re working on printing tickets and booking hotel rooms.

So how did the A’s get to this point? I’m glad you asked.

Offense

The A’s don’t bash opponents over the head as much as they can attack them in waves. They have some standouts in interesting positions, like DH (Khris Davis), third base (Matt Chapman) and second base (Jed Lowrie), but honestly, it’s a lot like it always was. The A’s mix-and-match across the board with very few guys who have a dead-set position.

Mark Canha is the guy in center field right now, and he’s hitting a good, but not great .245/.321/.432 (109 OPS+). He’s made 30 starts in center, 18 in left, eight in right and six at first base. Chad Pinder is listed as the team’s top utility guy, and he’s gotten into 83 games while hitting 247/.331/.418 — also a 109 OPS+.

His chart of positions played reads more like a phone number than anything else:

39 starts in left

11 starts at second

five starts in right

three starts at third

three starts at short

two starts in center

Things haven’t been perfect for this offense, either. Lucroy, a free agent at season’s end, is hitting just .240/.296/.322. That’s a worst line than backup Josh Phegley, who also isn’t setting the world on fire (85 OPS+).

Matt Joyce has been one of the more underrated offensive players in baseball in recent years — in large part due to playing more against righties — but he’s hit just .203/.311/.359 this season. He’s currently on the shelf with a back issue, but should return after rosters expand.

Marcus Semien has good pop but hasn’t stood out offensively at short, and Stephen Piscotty has put together a fine offensive season (112 OPS+) despite just a .316 OBP.

All of this wrapped up is an offense that is ranked as follows among 15 AL clubs:

Runs – sixth

Hits – fifth

Doubles – second

Triples – eighth

Homers – fourth

Batting average – seventh

On-base percentage – seventh

Slugging percentage – fourth

It’s basically a team of low-OBP thumpers who don’t steal bases — 29 all year, last in AL — and have no problem settling for doubles if balls aren’t flying out of the park.

Additionally, this team has some defenders who can really, really pick it. Nobody in baseball is better than Chapman at third base, and Matt Olson (111 OPS+) at first is in a class of his own at first as well.

If those two don’t win the Gold Gloves for their respective positions, it’ll be a big upset.

Starting Pitching

The starting pitching has been pretty good for the A’s.

Here’s how the rotation ranks statistically in the junior circuit:

ERA – fifth

FIP – seventh

K/9 – 14th

BB/9 – third

HR/9 – fifth

GB rate – first

Let’s hone in on groundball rate for a second. When a team has weak strikeout rates, grounders — since they can’t leave the yard and rarely go for extra bases — are typically the preferred batted balls to be allowed by a pitching staff.

And this rotation doesn’t miss too many bats.

Lefty Sean Manaea is a tremendous talent, but he’s fanned just 107 batters in his 155.2 innings pitched this season (6.2 K/9). In fact, the only starter flirting with a league-average strikeout rate is Thursday starter Trevor Cahill, a 30-year-old journeyman who was signed off the scrap heap. He’s fanned 8.8 batters per nine innings with a 3.12 ERA (3.10 FIP).

Every other starter is under 7.0 K/9.

It’s really a strange list, too. Edwin Jackson — in the midst of his age-34 season — has given the A’s a 2.97 ERA in 11 starts. Brett Anderson has given the A’s 12 starts with a 3.47 ERA.

Jackson is in his 16th big-league season and on his 13th MLB club. Cahill and Anderson have both come full circle after beginning their careers in Green and Gold. These guys have stepped up as A’s youngsters like Kendall Graveman, Frankie Montas, Daniel Mengden, Chris Bassitt and Andrew Triggs have bounced back and forth between the big leagues and Nashville.

It’s a weird bunch — but it’s working.

Bullpen

This is quietly a sturdy bunch, and Billy Beane has done a terrific job supplementing along the way.

Everything begins and ends with Blake Treinen, who has arguably been the best or second-best reliever in the AL this year after Mariners closer Edwin Diaz. Treinen has allowed six earned runs all season (0.87 ERA) and has an 86-20 K/BB ratio in just 62 innings.

Treinen has proven to be the best arm traded in the deal from last year where the Nationals upgraded their bullpen in the short-term with Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson while the A’s played the long game with the youngster.

Oh, and the A’s also got a surging prospect starter in Jesus Luzardo as well.

The bridge to Treinen is terrific, too. Veteran swingman Yusmeiro Petit was brought in to soak up multiple innings at a time, and he’s done a good job with 77 innings tossed in 59 appearances with a 3.39 ERA.

The rest of the mainstays are hardly household names. Lou Trivino is a 26-year-old righty who has been absolutely terrific this season (1.62 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, more than a strikeout per inning) and Emilio Pagan (3.71 ERA) and Ryan Buchter (3.18 ERA, 10.2 K/9) have been solid as well.

But it’s been more about the additions than anything. Here’s a look at who the A’s have picked up for their bullpen along the way:

July 21 – Traded for Jeurys Familia

Aug. 5 – Traded for Shawn Kelley

Aug. 9 – Traded for Fernando Rodney

That’s half of a really good bullpen that the A’s picked up in a matter of about three weeks, and it bolstered what was already a solid unit.

Rodney feels like he fell into a pretty great situation, for what it’s worth.

“There’s a lot of talent in the bullpen,” Rodney said when he spoke to reporters before his first game back at Target Field since the trade. “I’m chilling. I’m relaxing. No pressure on myself because we’ve got Familia, we’ve got all these guys that have got stuff to close the game and to beat Houston.

“We’ve got a good team. What I’ve seen of these guys — they’re relaxed. They go outside to play baseball to have fun. That’s more important to the team.”

Rodney hasn’t allowed an earned run over his first six appearances.

The same is true for Kelley.

Familia has been terrific through 13 appearances — 3.00 ERA, 2.02 FIP, 19-7 K/BB in 15 innings.

And it’s fair to say the A’s paid less than market price for all three. The Nationals simply wanted Kelley gone after his on-mound meltdown during a blowout of the Mets, the Twins took back a long-term project in minor-league pitcher Dakota Chalmers and Familia was traded for Bobby Wahl (a 26-year-old reliever with a 6.92 career ERA in 13 innings) and prospect Will Toffey, a third-base only prospect with an advanced approach but not much power.

This is a master’s course on building a bullpen — and quite frankly, a roster.

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So what does this have to do with the Twins?

I mean maybe it’s honestly not much. The A’s are a rag-tag bunch of guys thrown together by one of the most highly-regarded executives in the game, and will look drastically different a year from now no matter if they win the World Series or fall off the face of the earth.

But it does help to show that the path to October isn’t paved in gold spent in free agency. The A’s have gotten there by being creative. They’ve gotten there by going heads up against an Astros team they have no business beating. While that’s only led to a 6-10 record against Houston, they’ve won five of their last seven games against the Astros, including taking three of four at Minute Maid Park just before the All-Star break and two of three in Oakland just last weekend.

You can win by spending paper, but the game isn’t played on paper. Creative roster construction, striking when the opportunity presents itself and consistently winning trades — even just a little bit — can create enough of a competitive advantage that teams like this can come out on top.

The Twins don’t need to play by the same rules as the A’s, but they can win by copying some of their methods. And based on how the brain trust of Derek Falvey and Thad Levine have operated over the last 20-something months, it feels like they’re on the right track.