The Athletics will promote top pitching prospect Sean Manaea to start on Friday, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Manaea, a 24-year-old southpaw, came to Oakland last summer in the deal that sent Ben Zobrist to the Royals.
Since his arrival, Manaea has done nothing but impress. Already considered a top-100 prospect, he dominated at Double-A and started out the 2016 season at the highest level of the minors. Over 18 innings in three starts, he owns a 1.50 ERA with 10.5 K/9 against 2.0 BB/9.
Entering the year, Baseball America credited Manaea’s big fastball, inconsistent but intriguing slider, and promising but still-developing change. BA rated him just inside the top fifty pre-MLB assets in the game, while MLB.com (#65) and ESPN.com’s Keith Law (#59) placed him a bit further down on their own lists. He isn’t generally seen as a fully-finished product, with polish on the secondary offerings and command cited as areas for improvement, but he’s certainly has done enough to warrant a shot at the major league level.
Righty Jesse Hahn had seemed in line for a promotion as the club looks to replace the optioned Eric Surkamp, and he’s certainly the more experienced arm. But as Slusser explains, Hahn is dealing with a blister at present so wasn’t an immediate option.
Whether or not Manaea will get more than a spot start remains to be seen. Either way, he won’t have the chance to accumulate enough MLB time to achieve a full year of service. But if Manaea can stick at the major league level, he would line himself up for future Super Two status and an extra year of arbitration eligibility.
The young lefty is one of several notable arms to get their first call-ups in recent days. You can read up on all of the recent top prospect promotions right here.
Thank you for posting promotions! It really helps me get a jump on free agent signings in my fantasy baseball league when I only have the time to come here instead of checking out all my sites.
MLBTR is, and always has been, a great place for all of the information I could ask for!
Gray-Hill-Manaea-Alvarez-Hahn = playoffs?
Bassit & prospects for Lucroy? Move Vogt to 1B full time so he stops getting hurt so much and calling for challenge pitches with no runners on, resulting in homers. Promote Chapman to everyday 3B too and just cut Butler who is hurting the team by being on it.
Burns-Reddick-Vogt-Lucroy-Davis-Chapman-Valencia-Lowrie-Semien as the starting lineup with Coghlan, Phegley, Crisp & Alonso on bench.
Mengden, Overton, Wendleken are on fire in the minors right now too – the A’s are looking really, really good right now. There’s been about 4 400+ foot outs by Davis and Coghlan in Detroit this series – those go out almost everywhere else. Talk about a perfect rebuild. Lets all wave goodbye to the Gray trade rumors for a year at least.
I’ve been telling people for months that the A’s are in a good position, especially with their pitching depth. Couldn’t understand why they were considered the worst AL team by most experts. They also massively upgraded the bullpen which was their biggest weakness last year. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they made the playoffs. That Lucroy idea is pretty interesting, and his modest salary for the next 1.5 years makes him a good fit in Oakland.
Makes him a good fit for half the teams in the League. Also, Vogt/Phegley was a good catching tandem. Both have been alright this year, especially considering they both came into the season ailing.