Can the Oakland Athletics rely on Yoenis Cespedes for an entire 162 game season?  A lot of people would probably look at his recent injury issues and say no.  In just one season and a month he has missed 33% of the regular season games and that doesn’t include the three more games he is going to miss before he is scheduled to come off of the disabled list.  It’s hard to say a team can rely on anyone who is going to miss a third of the games, but it is something the Athletics are going to have to do.

Why?  Why would the Athletics have to rely on someone who is going to miss that many games?  They have to do this because it is the way this team is built.  A’s General Manager Billy Beane is famous for finding defective players and using everything they have left to get his team in a position to win.  He did it last year when he picked up gold glove caliber third baseman in Brandon Inge, a former top prospect turned journeyman in Travis Blackley, and a home run hitting right fielder turned first baseman in Brandon Moss who had all been cast off by team after team.  These three players and so many more have been picked up by Billy Beane to help the team succeed.

But in the case of Cespedes, he is not just a cog in the machine that will help the team win, he is the cog in the machine that makes the team win.  It was much publicized last year that the team won at a much higher rate when Cespedes was in the lineup, and it has carried over into this year.  The team started out with nine wins and only two losses before Cespedes was placed on the DL, and they are four and seven since.  That number looks even worse when you look closer to see that three of the four wins came against the bottom dweller Houston Astros.

Why is he so important that this team, built of young and injury prone players, needs him so much?  It’s because he is the only player out of all the defective and injury prone players that the opposing pitchers absolutely fear.  Even with Cespedes batting only .200 on the season, he is working the count and making the opposing pitcher throw their best pitches to get him out, which in turn causes the guys who bat behind him, like Brandon Moss and Seth Smith, to see better pitches.  It’s not an exact science, but Cespedes helps the rest of the team out just by being out there.

So can the team rely on him? No, they cannot at his current pace of injuries.  The way the team is built, though, they absolutely have to rely on him.  He simply makes his team better.