Home is where the heart is, but when those in charge are heartless, what can you expect?
While their ugly exit from Oakland received all the attention over the last few years, the A’s have quickly and quietly built a roster that could surprise this year. Should they be considered among the best teams in the league — or even the division? Absolutely not. Could they have a 2024 Royals-esque surge up the standings? If enough things break their way, it’s possible!
While their ugly exit from Oakland received all the attention over the last few years, the A’s have quickly and quietly built a roster that could surprise this year. Should they be considered among the best teams in the league — or even the division? Absolutely not. Could they have a 2024 Royals-esque surge up the standings? If enough things break their way, it’s possible!
They’ve got legitimate offensive pieces to build around in Brent Rooker and Lawrence Butler, both of whom earned lengthy contract extensions this offseason. They spent big to bring in Luis Severino to front their rotation and traded for Jeffrey Springs; both pitchers significantly raise the ceiling of their rotation. And Mason Miller, one of the most dominant closers in the game, is still leading their bullpen. There are solid pieces on this roster but perhaps too many question marks in the cracks between those pillars. The error bars on the projections below are very wide — they’ve got the potential to compete for a Wild Card spot or sink to the bottom of the division — but the midpoint of those projections sees just an incremental improvement over last year.
2025 FanGraphs Depth Charts projections: 75.1-86.9, 5th in AL West, 9.4% playoff odds
2025 PECOTA projections: 74.3-87.7, 4th in AL West, 4.9% playoff odds
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Despite their new offseason additions, the Mariners pitching staff is projected to produce nearly double the WAR than Sacramento. The A’s pitching was in a state before adding Severino and Springs, and those two alone can only raise the bar so much. On the offensive side of things, Butler and Rooker give the A’s a decided advantage in right field and at designated hitter and Zack Gelof and Jacob Wilson are projected to be slightly more valuable at second base and shortstop. Still, the A’s lack the presence of a true superstar (or two), as Julio Rodríguez and Cal Raleigh give the Mariners the advantage when looking at the lineup as a whole.
If It All Goes Right
With apologies to Jon Bois, I’ve never found the Mariners to be protagonists; that requires them to occupy a much more central role in baseball’s narrative than they’ve traditionally had, hemming and pecking at the corners of relevancy, the background players while other, greater dramas are enacted. One such drama unfolded this past season right here in the AL West, while the eternally Plucky Upstart Oakland A’s unlocked a new level of pluck and startup, steadfastly playing out the season while their billionaire failson owner gambled carelessly, recklessly with the future of one of baseball’s most storied franchises. The black and white hats seem to be doing their own cap shuffle these days, but make no mistake: the A’s are the heroes who suit up each day without knowing what future awaits them, determined to deliver a good product on the field to a fanbase in flux despite the grasping ham-handed efforts of their owner. They are the protagonists; they are the Good Guys.
Happily, the Good Guys are accompanied by Good Bats. The pitching might be a question–especially away from the cavernous Coliseum and into the tighter quarters in Sacramento–but the A’s have lucked into players like Brent Rooker, the rare player whose PQ (Posting Quotient) is comparable to his xSLG, and smartly locked him up long-term. That goes double for Lawrence Butler, the youngster who’s given the A’s a true leadoff man who matches his plus speed with an actual feel to hit, something they’ve lacked out of that spot for years. With a strong 1-2 punch, the rest of the lineup falls into place: JJ Bleday, with a new, lowered-hands approach, seems to have finally unlocked the power that a corner outfielder needs, while Shea Langeliers’ two-true-outcomes approach is fine for a catcher in the year 2025. But where the 2025 A’s can take flight is their youth movement: Tyler Soderstrom has finally started to show flashes of the big bat that made him a top prospect, especially now that he’s been freed from the tools of ignorance, and Jacob Wilson, in his first full season, projects as a plus defender walk machine who can churn the bottom of the lineup over or sub in should Butler’s bat go into snooze mode. It’s not hard to squint and see this collection of former top prospects all hit their best-case-scenario outcomes in a wide-open AL West. That’s the hero’s journey, after all. -KP
If it All Goes Wrong
Like Pappy O’Daniel, John Fisher is a man without a constituency. With no shortage of cues that the trend of divesting the support or rooting interest for an entity from the individual in charge of or benefitting from that entity, Fisher has a problem. Just as many struggle to separate the art from the artist, Bay Area fans appear disinclined to separate the athletics from the Athletics, at least as potently as the heir to the Gap fortune has successfully separated the Athletics from Oakland. What could be more wrong than 2024? For the A’s, that comes down to a matter of perspective.
Players cannot control any of this, and on the field the cataclysm only necessitates a few choice variables. The broiling heat of a mid-summer Sacramento matinee singes Brent Rooker’s skin early, and his ginger movements presage another injury-prone campaign like those that slowed his start in Minnesota. In a cruel twist of fate, a rare rainy day brought forth the other tragedy, as Oakland rushed back following a wildfire-smoke choked early July to see Mason Miller foster his own Félix Hernández wet mound conspiracy. Sliding out of place on his plant leg on delivery, he drills former teammate Nick Allen while trying to salvage game three against Atlanta, coming a few seams from ending his career. The ensuing yips dog Miller all month, unable to shake the horror of his power. More aggravating than the human cost for the A’s front office, Miller’s performance flags so steeply, his trade value plummets ahead of the deadline, as do the A’s, into last place where they’ll remain for the next 3-4 years.
Grisly as it might be, that outcome could portend worse for the people of the East Bay. Fisher’s incompetent negotiating has left the Las Vegas move vastly more theoretical than what would be preferred for a three year timeline, and a disastrous, dead last dud could kaibosh the entire departure. Vegas merits a big league club, but Oakland and Northern California in general deserve a Fisher-free fan experience. The worst case is not truly too far-fetched – like Rooker in that triple-digit Sacramento summer sun, the A’s remain in purgatory. –JT