Seriously, people here have no comprehension of the gambler's fallacy, and it also seems like nobody watched the game.

Oakland doesn't have an ace? The best reliever in baseball gave up 3 ER in 2 innings - that seems like it had more to do with the loss than their starting pitchers. If you want to say "well if Oakland had an ace who could go 7-8 scoreless innings they would've won!" then you're fucking stupid, because your argument is that adding great players makes teams better. If the tradeoff is one ace pitcher but losing multiple bullpen arms, is it worth it? I'm 100% confident the A's have done that math more thoroughly than anyone on /r/baseball.

Oakland needs a superstar? Matt Chapman was a 6.5 win player, 11th in baseball. He played like one this year. They had plenty of plus power bats who can go yard. I'd rather have the best lineup possible than a good lineup that has one really good player because we "need a superstar" for some reason.

The chance of Oakland losing all these important games is also higher than people realize. Something being unlikely doesn't make it impossible. People see Oakland get in the playoffs and lose tight games and think "Oakland is underperforming!!1!!!11!!!" They don't ever stop and consider that maybe Oakland was massively overperforming to even be in that position. If you think that payroll correlates with talent (Which is true, there are just some terrible FOs with too much money), then Oakland should rarely even be in these games to begin with.