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Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n\t\t\t\tKamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
Quick programming note: I\u2019m working on a very special bonus Five Things that would normally run in this slot, but as with most bonus things, it\u2019s taking a bit longer than expected. Look for it next week, along with a regular Five Things. In the meantime, join me in puzzling over what\u2019s gotten into the A\u2019s.<\/p>\n
In 2023, the Oakland A\u2019s were putrid. They won only 50 games, got outscored by 339 runs, and generally looked like the worst team in baseball. But over the next two years, sandwiched around a move to Sacramento, they figured things out. In 2024, they improved by 19 games. In 2025, they improved again, to a 76-86 record. Nick Kurtz<\/a>, Shea Langeliers<\/a>, Tyler Soderstrom<\/a>, Brent Rooker<\/a>, and Jacob Wilson<\/a> either broke in or broke out in that span. Coming into 2026, the A\u2019s weren\u2019t favorites in the AL West, but they were trendy playoff picks, with various market and model estimates spitting out projections between 75 and 80 wins.<\/p>\n Yeah, about that. The American League is about as bad as it\u2019s ever been this year, and the AL West is particularly poor. Eighty-two wins might be enough to take the division. But the A\u2019s aren\u2019t part of the race. They\u2019re 54-86, a mere game ahead of the Angels for the worst record in baseball. They\u2019ve been outscored by 194 runs, 54 runs clear of the Rockies in second-to-last place. I had to investigate what went down \u2013 both because rubbernecking is fun, and because I want to figure out what I should think about the A\u2019s for 2027.<\/p>\n The obvious place to start is the offense. Last season saw four different Athletics eclipse 3.0 WAR on the batting side \u2013 Kurtz and Wilson had standout rookie seasons while Langeliers and Soderstrom both broke out to establish new career highs. Throw in Rooker and Lawrence Butler<\/a> as offensive building blocks, mix in a blazing-fast center fielder (your choice of Denzel Clarke<\/a> or Henry Bolte<\/a>), and the bones of an upper echelon offense were clearly there. Even if you count the two center field options as only one position filled, that\u2019s seven spots spoken for. The A\u2019s traded for Jeff McNeil<\/a> to fill an eighth spot. Their plan was surely to score a boatload of runs \u2013 a great plan in the snug confines of Sutter Health Park.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how that has gone:<\/p>\n A\u2019s Core Hitters, 2025 and 2026<\/p>\n Player Nick Kurtz Shea Langeliers Jacob Wilson Tyler Soderstrom Brent Rooker Lawrence Butler Denzel Clarke Henry Bolte Jeff McNeil Three of the nine have roughly met expectations. Bolte \u2014\u00a0and I\u2019m perhaps being generous to the A\u2019s by counting him among their core given that we didn\u2019t project him for much playing time before the season \u2014\u00a0has been the only positive surprise. Meanwhile, five hitters the A\u2019s were counting on have been far worse than expected. And so that\u2019s what went wrong, right?<\/p>\n \n You Aren’t a FanGraphs Member\n <\/p>\n \n It looks like you aren’t yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren’t logged in). We aren’t mad, just disappointed.\n <\/p>\n \n We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we’d like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.\n <\/p>\n 1. Ad Free viewing! We won’t bug you with this ad, or any other.<\/p>\n 2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.<\/p>\n 3. Dark mode and Classic mode!<\/p>\n 4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.<\/p>\n 5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.<\/p>\n 6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn’t sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)<\/p>\n 7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.<\/p>\n 8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don’t be a victim of FOMO.<\/p>\n 9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.<\/p>\n 10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!<\/p>\n \n We hope you’ll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we’ve also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn’t want to overdo it.\n <\/p>\n Nope! I included Bolte, who isn\u2019t a strong spiritual fit in that group, as a teaser for a group of contributors who have kept the Sacramento offense from completely sputtering. Bolte has lifted the floor in center. Zack Gelof<\/a> has bounced back from two nightmarish years to post a 110 wRC+. Carlos Cortes<\/a> has been league average offensively, better than we expected. Alika Williams<\/a>, an in-season acquisition from the Pirates, has chipped in with a 97 wRC+ over 175 plate appearances. The A\u2019s scored 4.52 runs per game last year. They\u2019re scoring 4.36 runs per game this year, hardly a disastrous fall.<\/p>\n If you wanted to, you could nitpick my framing. I covered how the hitters have done at the plate, but not how they\u2019ve done in the field, and the Athletics have struggled to turn batted balls into outs. Per DRS, they\u2019re the fourth-worst defensive team in the majors. Per FRV, they\u2019re second worst. Truthfully, though, the defense was already bad. They were fifth worst in DRS and ninth worst in FRV in 2025. The outfield defense has gotten worse \u2013 Soderstrom and Butler are having down defensive years and Bolte, while solid, can\u2019t hold a candle to Clarke in center. But on the infield, the opposite has happened. Wilson was either a little (DRS) or a lot (FRV) better than he was last year before he went down with a season-ending injury. Kurtz looked more comfortable at first base before he suffered a season-ending injury. And oh boy, have season-ending injuries been in style this summer. <\/p>\n Believe it or not, the A\u2019s have actually scored more runs per game since Kurtz hit the IL. Even more surprisingly, Langeliers has been out for the entire stretch, too. Soderstrom and Wilson are both out for the year after hitting the IL halfway through August. Kurtz has definitively been their best hitter this year, and his absence has meant a great deal of McNeil playing first base. Langeliers was having a second straight great season; his replacements have been just fine. Soderstrom and Wilson are valuable cogs. But the runs have kept coming. Baseball is hard to predict sometimes.<\/p>\n On the other hand, the A\u2019s have the second-worst record in baseball since Kurtz\u2019s departure. They\u2019ve gone 9-19, a half-game ahead of the woeful Rockies. They\u2019ve given up nearly six runs per game in that stretch, highlighted by a three-game, 30-run drubbing by the Rays. And that gets us to what\u2019s been ailing the Athletics most this year: They can\u2019t keep the ball in the park, and even when they do, they can\u2019t get opposing hitters out.<\/p>\n This feels like the core problem facing this iteration of the team. Playing in a bandbox in Sacramento, it\u2019s hard to imagine the offense not flowing to some degree. But preventing runs? The A\u2019s knew it would be an issue when they made the move before last year, which is why they brought in Luis Severino<\/a> and Jeffrey Springs<\/a>. They knew they needed some extra bulk innings after last year\u2019s pitching staff allowed five runs per game and tired down the stretch, so they added veterans Aaron Civale<\/a> and Mark Leiter Jr.<\/a> They fast-tracked 2024 draft pick Gage Jump<\/a>, calling him up after only nine starts in Triple-A. To be fair, we still had the A\u2019s down as having one of the worst staffs in baseball in our positional power rankings<\/a>, but not the worst staff.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no kind way to put this: The rotation has collapsed. Severino, the presumptive staff ace, made only 12 starts before a shoulder injury ended his season. Springs has been available, but the results have been disastrous. He\u2019s made 25 starts and surrendered 33 home runs, the most in baseball. He\u2019s allowed five or more runs nine different times, and delivered only four quality starts, none since May 17. That\u2019s also the last game where he went six innings or more. Civale pitched so poorly (5.42 ERA, 5.33 FIP) that the A\u2019s designated him for assignment in July; after being traded for a lottery ticket, he\u2019s turned his season around as a reliever with the Cubs.<\/p>\n Those were the veterans who were supposed to anchor the pitching staff. In their absence (or in Springs\u2019 case, despite his presence), the team has cast a net far and wide; 14 pitchers have started for them this year. A few have been pleasant surprises. J.T. Ginn<\/a>, a sinker-heavy fifth-starter type, is having the best year of his career, with a BABIP-aided 3.71 ERA and a 4.38 FIP. That FIP might sound bad, but it\u2019s more or less average; visiting pitchers have posted a 4.40 FIP in Sacramento this year.<\/p>\n Jump has been even better. Or maybe he\u2019s been much worse \u2013 pitching is so hard to decipher sometimes. Through the end of July, Jump was having an excellent debut season \u2013 a 4.00 ERA, a 3.71 FIP, a pile of strikeouts and a few signature games. But whether it\u2019s random variance or just hitting a rookie wall, he\u2019s been bad since the calendar flipped to August. He\u2019s made six starts and surrendered 25 runs, all of them earned. He\u2019s walking more than six batters per nine innings. His 7.58 ERA is laughable, but his 5.52 xERA isn\u2019t much better. He\u2019s given up scorched contact to all fields, and generally looked like a guy who\u2019s ready for a winter of conditioning and a new season.<\/p>\n Two other A\u2019s pitchers have chipped in double-digit starts this year. Jacob Lopez<\/a>, sneaky average in 2025, has been only OK in his second bite at the apple. In somewhat of a trend for A\u2019s starters, he\u2019s walking way too many batters: a 11.2% walk rate, or 4.5 per nine innings. Jack Perkins<\/a>, a fifth-round pick from 2022 whom we projected as a reliever, has thrown in 12 walk-prone starts of his own, with run estimators ranging between the upper fours and lower sixes.<\/p>\n The A\u2019s were never projected to have a good bullpen this year, and their relievers have been pressed into carrying a large workload because the starters have struggled so much. ERA estimators agree that the A\u2019s have around the fifth-worst bullpen in baseball; their relievers are fifth worst in FIP, sixth worst in xFIP, seventh worst in xERA, and ninth worst in SIERA. But their actual results have been much worse than that. They\u2019ve allowed a 5.56 ERA, worst in the game by half a run. They\u2019re surrendering a ludicrous .320 BABIP, which accounts for a lot of the issue, and have the lowest strand rate in the game. And they\u2019ve been even worse at home.<\/p>\n Teasing out park effects in small samples is very difficult, but here\u2019s one way of explaining how much of a nightmare pitching at home is for this staff. On the road, A\u2019s pitchers have been broadly unremarkable. They\u2019ve managed a 4.25 FIP, which isn\u2019t great, and their 4.58 ERA is even worse. But at home, they\u2019re putrid. They\u2019ve posted a 5.54 FIP, the worst in baseball by more than half a run, and a 6.33 ERA, the worst by more than a run. They\u2019ve given up a gobsmacking 132 homers in 69 home games. Sure, they did play six home games in Las Vegas, and they got tagged for 15 homers in those games, but even excluding those, they\u2019ve been flammable in Sacramento.<\/p>\n There\u2019s probably some random variance to that split. Last year, the pitching was a little worse at home, but not markedly so. But pitching in a bandbox in front of a porous defense would make anyone afraid to attack the strike zone, and the A\u2019s have nibbled to an extreme extent this year. They throw to the heart of the strike zone at one of the lowest rates in baseball, and throw far outside the zone at one of the highest rates. They don\u2019t miss many bats or induce many chases, which means that those out-of-zone pitches aren\u2019t turning into strikeouts as often as they\u2019d hope. No team in baseball gets ahead in the count less frequently.<\/p>\n Therein lies the answer to what\u2019s gone wrong with the A\u2019s this year. There are levels to pitching incompetence. You can be garden-variety bad, putting your team in tough situations. You can be bad but jagged \u2013 some good performers, some bad performers. But the A\u2019s are a different kind of bad. They\u2019re \u201cplay lots of your games with little hope of winning\u201d bad. They\u2019ve gotten tattooed early 22 times this year, by which I mean losing by three or more runs while having surrendered five or more runs through only four innings. I set those bars somewhat arbitrarily, but they feel like a good barometer for feeling like the game is likely lost.<\/p>\n Somehow, they are not the team that has been blown out early most frequently \u2014 that\u2019d be the Rockies, who have managed the task 27 times. But the A\u2019s have been blown out early the second-most times, and they have blown their opponents out early only nine times, tied for third fewest in the league. Likewise, they\u2019re getting comprehensively stomped \u2013 down four or more while having given up eight or more runs through seven innings \u2013 an eye-watering 19 times. They\u2019ve done it to other teams only eight times; they\u2019re the only team in baseball with such a lopsided ratio between blowout wins and blowout losses.<\/p>\n In other words, these pitchers have been so bad that they\u2019ve played the team out of games. And try as you might to reduce baseball to a contextless sequence of random plate appearance outcomes, that\u2019s not how the game works. Things get weird when you\u2019re down big early. The low-leverage bullpen crew stretches out. Managers sub out players who might need a rest day. Position players pitch, often on both sides. Pitching styles change. Approaches change, too \u2013 as much as a player might try to take things one out at a time, it probably gets harder in a game that is probably already over.<\/p>\n From my perspective, that\u2019s the takeaway from this A\u2019s season. Through a combination of injuries, ineffectiveness, and poor upfront planning, the A\u2019s couldn\u2019t put together a big league-caliber pitching staff this year. The guys they ended up with have gotten crushed far too frequently, which means that a truly shocking number of A\u2019s games have stopped being competitive early. The bummer season follows somewhat naturally.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t measure the long-term effect this might have on A\u2019s players, but I think you should assume there\u2019s at least some effect. This is a rough environment to play baseball in. The facilities, while much improved over the last two years, are well below the major league standard. The games are often uncompetitive. The squad that has played most of the summer \u2013 down some pitchers due to injury, and losing more players as the team started planning for next year \u2013 has gotten flat out demolished. The A\u2019s are 14-40 since the start of July, and they\u2019ve allowed 6.4 runs per game in that stretch, a number that I calculated four times because it hardly seems possible over that long of a time period. It doesn\u2019t even include the Vegas games!<\/p>\n This year is clearly over for the Athletics. But they\u2019ve collapsed so spectacularly that 2027\u2019s outlook feels a little shaky too. Can a team survive in a PCL stadium with a PCL pitching staff, facing major league opposition? This summer would suggest that one cannot. Can the A\u2019s do enough to fortify their rotation and bullpen, whether by trade, signing, or promotion? We\u2019ll have to see, though 2026 doesn\u2019t fill me with hope. But this year\u2019s form just won\u2019t work. You can analyze their woes in a lot of different ways, but at the end of the day, when you get scored on this early and this often, finishing at the bottom of the league feels all but inevitable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images Quick programming note: I\u2019m working on a very special bonus Five Things that would normally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-453569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2025 wRC+
\n2026 Proj wRC+
\n2026 wRC+<\/p>\n
\n165
\n136
\n139<\/p>\n
\n127
\n119
\n122<\/p>\n
\n116
\n113
\n83<\/p>\n
\n120
\n116
\n117<\/p>\n
\n117
\n130
\n78<\/p>\n
\n91
\n103
\n91<\/p>\n
\n70
\n84
\n13<\/p>\n
\nn\/a
\n94
\n104<\/p>\n
\n109
\n109
\n85<\/p>\n