Melvin on Fiers' role: 'We want to start him'

Three days after apparently accepting a bullpen role, Mike Fiers will instead settle back into more familiar territory. Fiers is slated to start on Friday at home against the Orioles, which will be his 2021 debut after missing time due to a lumbar strain.

After pacing the A’s in starts over the past two seasons (44), Fiers was theoretically bumped to the bullpen due to the impressive work by his replacement, Cole Irvin, who has a 1.56 ERA in his past three starts. But now that Fiers is joining the fray, Oakland will temporarily operate with a six-man rotation.

“We want to start him,” Melvin said of Fiers. “It wasn’t a great fit for him to be in the bullpen, and we’ll get him back doing what he normally does.”

Given that the A’s are nearly at the midway point of a stretch of 17 consecutive days with a game, adding an extra starter should benefit the pitching workload for the near future. That doesn’t mean the six-man system will be sticking around, though.

“It makes more sense right now,” Melvin said. “We’ll re-evaluate after and [see] how everybody pitches. It’s always nice to get the other starters an extra day as well. We had 10 in a row to start the season, we have 17 in a row right now, so not ideal as far as the schedule goes.”

Fiers hasn’t pitched in relief since Sept. 28, 2018, and he owns a 5.40 ERA in 35 innings in that role. As a starter, however, he has a 4.00 ERA and 1,106 2/3 innings.

Given that Melvin offered a strong vote of confidence for Irvin on Wednesday night, it’ll be interesting to see who might be the odd man out in the event of a five-man rotation down the line.

Olson scratched late with left eye injury
It’s possible that Matt Olson is hitting the ball too hard right now, and that was his undoing on Thursday morning.

While taking batting practice prior to the A's 3-2 win over the Rays in the series finale, Olson hit a ball off the L-screen that ricocheted back and hit him in the left eye. That prompted Oakland to scratch him from the lineup, moving Mitch Moreland to first base.

“It’s swollen pretty good,” Melvin said of Olson’s eye.

The first baseman underwent X-rays on Thursday, which revealed that he didn’t suffer any broken bones. Olson's availability moving forward is still undetermined, but the team hopes he can avoid a stint on the injured list.

“Depends on when his eye decides to open up,” third baseman Matt Chapman said with a laugh. “That thing is pretty sealed shut right now.”

In an offense that has struggled during this road trip -- scoring just 19 runs in seven games -- Olson was by far the brightest light. He’s 18th in the Majors in OPS (.943) and has twice as many home runs (six) as anyone else on the A’s.

There’s no indication that Olson will have to miss significant time, but for now his replacements are Moreland and Seth Brown. All three of those players are left-handed batters, which intensifies the need for the right-handed Chad Pinder -- currently on the 10-day injured list with a sprained left knee -- to return and offer some platoon protection.