A’s retool again as future in Oakland remains in doubt

BY J.A. SCHWARTZ

The Oakland A’s have indicated their intentions about the 2022 season with a flurry of trades that may not be fully complete even when their season begins on April 7th. Despite qualifying for the playoffs three straight years, including a division title in the shortened 2020 campaign, last year’s team fell short of the postseason, finishing 86-76, nine games back of the division champion Astros.

Given the rising payroll associated with their maturing young stars, GM David Forst has embarked upon a retooling effort that he hopes will be similar to the pathway they chose after the 2014 season. After that year, having made the playoffs in each of the prior three seasons, the team traded the best player on their roster, Josh Donaldson, to Toronto, and their best pitcher, Jeff Samardzija, to the White Sox. Those transactions netted them both Chris Bassitt and Marcus Semien, who would combine to form the core of the next competitive A’s team. That version of the Oakland franchise would go on to finish last in the AL West for three straight seasons before breaking through as a Wild Card team in 2018. Forst would be thrilled if the current process would result in a similarly brief down cycle that leads to a new playoff window by 2025. Such is the plight of the Oakland A’s.

Since the lockout ended on March 11th, they’ve dealt arguably their best three players: Matt Olson, Matt Chapman and Chris Bassitt, each of whom had been with the team the past five seasons. The first domino to fall was Bassitt, 33, who suffered a gruesome facial fracture in August after a line drive struck him on the mound, but still returned to pitch the final week of the season. The righty was 12-4 with a 3.15 ERA for the A’s and was a first time All-Star in 2021 and was traded to the Mets for a pair of minor league pitchers, the most prominent of whom is J.T. Ginn, the Mets second round pick in the 2020 draft who is now listed as the best pitching prospect in the A’s system.

A few days later, Forst packaged his biggest asset, 27-year-old first baseman Matt Olson who hit .271/.371/.540 with 39 home runs and 111 RBIs (all career highs), in a trade with the Braves. In return, the A’s brought back centerfield prospect Christian Pache and catching prospect Shea Langeliers, both of whom were ranked among the top 100 prospects in the game by Baseball America prior to the 2022 season. Langeliers ranked 54th overall, while Pache checks in at 84th, and both are players who might debut for the A’s in 2022. The Braves subsequently signed Olson to an eight-year, $169 million dollar extension, locking him into their lineup for the next decade to replace franchise icon Freddie Freeman.

Matt Chapman won the Gold Glove at third in three of the past four seasons, and he’ll take his fielding excellence to Toronto to play in Canada with AL MVP runner-up Vlad Guerrero Jr. in a stacked lineup. The A’s traded Chapman to the Blue Jays in return for four prospects, including 2021 first round pick pitcher Gunnar Hogland and shortstop Kevin Smith, the fifth and seventh best prospects in the Toronto system. Hogland is coming off Tommy John surgery and might not pitch until late in 2022, while Smith will be 26 this summer and may well slot in as Chapman’s replacement at the hot corner. Smith hit .275/.370/.561 with 21 homers at AAA last summer but struggled in his first taste of the big leagues in September.

It’s possible that A’s fans will get to see Smith, Langeliers and Pache in Oakland at some point in 2022, but the driving force behind the transactions was never about improving the product on the field-it was to shed payroll as their star players began to get expensive. The trades leave the A’s payroll at $41.5 million for 2022, and that’s before the inevitable deals that will send pitchers Sean Manaea ($10.2 million) and Frankie Montas ($5.2 million) packing. That payroll level is 27th in baseball, and nearly $90 million short of the average of $128 million across MLB franchises.

The team on the field this season should include catcher Sean Murphy, fresh off a Gold Glove win of his own in 2021. Right now, Seth Brown, who hit .217/.274/.480 for Oakland in 2021, figures to get the first shot to replace Olson at first. Tony Kemp returns as the incumbent at second, and 33-year-old Elvis Andrus will try to rebound from a dismal season that saw him hit .243/.294/.320 with just three homers. Kevin Smith might be on the field on Opening Day in Chapman’s stead at third, but will have to win the job with a solid spring. Ramon Laureano is still serving his suspension for PED use and will miss the first 27 games of the season, opening the door for defensive wizard Christian Pache, acquired in the Olson deal with the Braves, to start the year with the A’s in centerfield. Stephen Piscotty and Chad Pinder are penciled in to the outfield corners, while Eric Thames is likely to take most of the at-bats from the DH slot. Thames signed a minor league deal with Oakland after trying to resurrect his career in Japan with the Yomuiri Giants in 2021.

The pitching staff will almost certainly be changing from the current iteration, but with Bassitt in New York, lefty Sean Manaea figures to get the nod to start Opening Day, followed by righty Frankie Montas, both of whom may well be dealt before having the chance to take another turn for new A’s manager Mark Kotsay. Kotsay will replace popular manager Bob Melvin, who decamped for San Diego to helm the Padres this offseason. Kotsay figures to follow Manaea and Montas with lefty Cole Irvin, and allow prospects Dalton Jefferies and Paul Blackburn to round out the rotation, though righty Brent Honeywell, acquired from the Rays this offseason, may also figure in the mix to start games. The bullpen will likely be led by Lou Trivino, who had 22 saves for Oakland in 2021. He’ll be set up by righties Deolis Guerra and breakout candidate Domingo Acevedo, as well as lefty A.J. Puk, who is trying to stay healthy enough to fulfill the promise he showed when the A’s made him the sixth overall pick in the 2016 draft. Puk has yet to throw more than 14 innings in a major league season, but still retains a killer slider that may allow him to emerge as a late inning option for Kotsay.

A’s fans are accustomed to the realities of small-market baseball, and are girding themselves for what they hope will be a brief cycle of rebuilding for the franchise. Executive VP Billy Beane has proven capable of building playoff caliber rosters on a shoestring budget, providing 11 seasons of postseason baseball for over his 25 years in the Oakland front office. Despite those 11 berths in the playoffs, Oakland has not won an AL Pennant since 1990, and has only advanced to the ALCS once (2006) under Beane’s leadership. He and GM David Forst have begun the painful process of moving popular veterans for financial reasons, but both have earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their long-term vision of the franchise. It shouldn’t be too long before the A’s are playing October baseball once again.