{"id":803206,"date":"2026-07-16T04:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T04:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/803206\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T04:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T04:18:09","slug":"athletics-to-select-tommy-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/803206\/","title":{"rendered":"Athletics To Select Tommy White"},"content":{"rendered":"

The A\u2019s will call up infielder Tommy White<\/a> for Friday\u2019s series opener against the Nationals, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN<\/a>. It\u2019ll be the major league debut for the former LSU star.<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s transaction log<\/a> at MLB.com indicates that the A\u2019s are also activating\u00a0recently claimed<\/a> utilityman\u00a0Donovan Walton<\/a>. First baseman\u00a0Joey Meneses<\/a> and catcher Brian Serven<\/a> are being optioned to Triple-A, which left one active roster spot for a position player. White isn\u2019t on the 40-man roster but can replace\u00a0Brent Rooker<\/a>, who is out for the season and can be transferred to the 60-day injured list.<\/p>\n

White was one of the best hitters in the country during his college career, hitting .355\/.419\/.704 over three seasons. He nevertheless fell to the second round of the 2024 draft because of concerns about an aggressive approach and his lackluster third base defense. White has been a good pure hitter throughout his minor league career, but he hasn\u2019t drawn many walks or hit for a ton of power. He owns a .279\/.337\/.430 slash line across 860 professional plate appearances.<\/p>\n

That includes a .303\/.345\/.489 showing over 55 games for Triple-A Las Vegas this year. White has only fanned in 14% of his plate appearances but has a tiny 4.8% walk rate. He makes a decent amount of hard contact, though his 50% ground-ball rate isn\u2019t ideal for a bat-first player with below-average speed.<\/p>\n

White has split his time between the corner infield positions. Scouting reports from Baseball America<\/a> and Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs<\/a> peg him as a below-average but not unplayable defender at third. Longenhagen wrote in April that White could be a plus defender at first base and loosely compared him to former Phillies corner infielder Maikel Franco<\/a> as an overall player. White ranks 11th in the A\u2019s farm system at BA and 17th at FanGraphs.<\/p>\n

The A\u2019s are getting a look at another rookie,\u00a0Joshua Kuroda-Grauer<\/a>, as their primary third baseman. They recently placed\u00a0Nick Kurtz<\/a> on the injured list and could give White a look there or at designated hitter. White should at least be in the lineup regularly against left-handed pitching, as he has pummeled southpaws at a .376\/.438\/.576 clip this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The A\u2019s will call up infielder Tommy White for Friday\u2019s series opener against the Nationals, reports Jeff Passan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85,376318],"class_list":["post-803206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-tommy-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}