Yoenis Cespedes had a .303 on-base percentage for the A's this season.

You have to account for the league's OBP (.317) and the vast acreage of the Oakland Coliseum when citing that, but the larger point still stands. Among A's players with more than 250 plate appearances, only Eric Sogard and Alberto Callaspo made outs more frequently. Blaming Oakland's ongoing struggles on Cespedes' absence is essentially saying, "The lack of an extra home run every six games is why the A's are 14-22 since the trade deadline." It's too neat, too convenient.

Our brains are wired to look for patterns, and the correlation of Cespedes leaving and the A's stinking is just too tempting to ignore. Put it this way, though: If the A's lost Cespedes to a hamstring injury and traded an A-ball reliever for Jon Lester on the same day, the buzz wouldn't have been about how the A's were doomed, doomed, doomed. The buzz would have been about Lester and the revamped pitching staff.

However, there are certainly ways to pick the A's apart using the awesome power of hindsight, and they don't have to involve the Lester/Cespedes trade. Here are the five biggest mistakes the A's have made in the last two months:

5. Overrating Jeff Samardzija

I'd like to think the A's figured they knew Jason Hammel wasn't really a sub-3.00 talent, so I'm not going to assume they rated him as such. They properly rated him, but he sure picked a lousy time to lose his strikeouts.

Samardzija, though, is a different story. The A's traded their best chip, their best prospect and one of the most talented prospects in the game, to get Samardzija, primarily. To trade a rare prospect like Addison Russell, you have to think you're getting something even more rare in return, like a top-of-the-rotation colossus.

Samardzija has never been that guy. He's looked like that guy -- tall and strong, with an upper-90s fastball and devastating offspeed stuff -- but he's never been that guy. He's 29, and this is likely just his second season with more than 200 innings. His career-low FIP before this year was 3.55. His career ERA+ before this year was 101, just a tick above average. His ERA+ with the A's is 100. The A's were hoping/guessing that Samardzija turned the corner late, like Max Scherzer. Instead, he's the pitcher they should have expected him to be.



Jeff Samardzija, Photo credit: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images

4. Not getting a second baseman

Up there I mentioned Cespedes's OBP, saying there were just two slackers below him. Both of them play second base. A's second basemen have hit .233/.301/.282 collectively, with one home run. There were several second basemen being peddled, from Asdrubal Cabrera to Daniel Murphy, but the A's preferred to corner the market on starting pitching. Considering that run prevention doesn't seem to be at the premium it was five years ago, it was an odd choice.

3. Trading Addison Russell

This one is going to sting worse than the Nelson Cruz/Andre Ethier/Carlos Gonzalez super-outfield that never was. Russell is a 20-year-old shortstop, already showing power and speed in Double-A. He's on pace to be a 22-year-old regular and a 24-year-old All-Star who will work cheaply for the next six years. Exactly what the A's should forever be looking for, in other words.

(Unless he doesn't pan out at all. Prospects, man.)

2. Not distributing the runs properly

The A's are a full eight games under their expected winning percentage. Based on the amount of runs scored and allowed, they should be 88-55 -- three games up on the Angels. It would be hard for a sleeper cell manager, working for another organization in secret and batting Nick Punto third, to manage his way to an eight-game deficit in expected winning percentage. It's nearly impossible.

What the A's should have done is back off a little when they were blowing other teams out. They should have taken the extra runs they were going to score, sealed them in some Tupperware, and put them in the freezer until the low-scoring, one-run games. Because that's how baseball works.

1. Having a stretch of awful luck, combined with their two divisional rivals getting hot at exactly the same time their closer got hurt, which led to a string of freaky blown leads and saves, further demoralizing the team, while the combination of low-average hitters slumping at the same time makes that one hit at the right time seem forever out of reach, with the surprisingly effective members of the starting rotation regressing to the mean and pitching closer to their preseason projections

Yeah, that. They shouldn't have done that.

It's the last two that I'll blame the most. The A's have been unlucky. The A's have been hurt. The A's probably weren't a 100-win team, even while they were playing at a 100-win pace, and a little regression was likely. The A's are still good. The A's wouldn't be as much of a story if they weren't playing in the same division as a team that's freaking out and winning every game. It's all of the above.

Sometimes a losing stretch is just a losing stretch, filled with everything going dramatically wrong at once.

I still think the A's should have passed on Samardzija in favor of a second baseman, especially if they could have acquired one without giving up Russell, but that's more of a long-term concern. It's not the reason the A's are mired in a death-plummet right now. Sometimes a losing stretch is just a losing stretch, filled with everything going dramatically wrong at once. It's a pair of hanging breaking balls to Tyler Flowers with his new glasses in a one-run game instead of a hanging breaking ball to a blind Tyler Flowers in a blowout. It's losing five out of your last six one-run games because that one magical hit never comes.

If there were two months left in the season, I'd practically guarantee that the A's would be fine. As is, they'll have to settle for the wild card and the cruelty of a one-game playoff, and that's if they're fortunate. There are about 20 other teams that wish they had that problem, but there's nothing like the tyranny of heightened expectations to make a bad month seem like the end of the world.

You can also blame it on Baseball-Reference.com if you want.

Just go with that. It makes a lot more sense than blaming everything on Yoenis Cespedes leaving. He was a popular fan-favorite in a tight-knit clubhouse, surely, and a talented player. But the A's problems have more to do with baseball being a jerk at exactly the wrong time. You can't plan for that.