From 2018-21, only four teams in Major League Baseball won more games than the A's. They'd navigated a lean stretch from 2015-17 that saw them rattle off three consecutive last-place finishes in the AL West and come out on the other side with a swiftly acquired/developed core. Matt Olson, Matt Chapman and Sean Murphy were top-100 draft picks. Sean Manaea, Chris Bassitt and Frankie Montas were key pieces in the returns received for Ben Zobrist, Jeff Samardzija and Josh Reddick/Rich Hill, respectively. Mark Canha was added via the Rule 5 Draft (technically in a trade with the Rockies). Ramon Laureano was acquired from the division-rival Astros for a song.
The staying power of that core, as is ever the case with the low-budget A's, was finite. In early September 2021 -- much to the chagrin of some A's fans; my apologies -- MLBTR looked ahead to the massive slate of arbitration salaries facing the then-Oakland club and wondered whether another broad-reaching teardown was nigh, given the escalating cost of that core.
That rebuild indeed came to pass. Over the next calendar year, each of Olson, Chapman, Manaea, Bassitt, Montas and Lou Trivino were traded for prospects. The following offseason, Murphy, A.J. Puk and Cole Irvin followed. Canha, just like Marcus Semien and Liam Hendriks a year prior, departed for no compensation. Sam Moll went at the 2023 trade deadline.
The plus side seemed to be a bevy of new prospects who could potentially accelerate the rebuild process and help get a contending group back on the field sooner than later. If you'd told A's fans on Opening Day 2022, after that miserable offseason rebuild, that the 2025 club would be an on-the-rise team with an exciting core of hitters, they'd likely have begrudgingly accepted that another rebuild paid dividends.
Except ... that's not really the case. It's true that the A's are winning in 2025 and look more exciting than they have in four years -- but they've reached this point not because of that rebuild but rather in spite of it. Let's take a look back at the rebuild, the missteps along the way, and the manner in which this nucleus came together despite a series of whiffs on the trade market.
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drafting jacob wilson was brilliant. might be ROY
and kurtz looks like the best pick outta 2024
I do like Wilson and Kurtz. The A’s have a bright future, but I think the A’s would have taken Chase Burns if they could have done so over Kurtz.
Go, Sacramento A’s.
West Sacramento
The San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams are not in those cities either. Sutter Health Park is a one block walk from the small river that separates Sacramento the anchor city with West Sacramento the ancillary city.
Difference is that those teams are called those names. The A’s don’t even have a city attached. They are just ” The Athletics” So if we are going to call them with a city name. It is West Sacramento A’s.
Nah
*West* Sacramento.
They are not in “Sacramento” not even in Sacramento County either.
It’s irrelevant where it’s at. The Greater Cincinnati Airport is in Hebron, Kentucky but that doesn’t change people from calling it the Cincinnati Airport and it is in an entirely different state.
And what’s more, they refer to that building (you know which one) as the Dolly Parton Building, and she’s never even been there.
The good ol’ Procter and Gamble building. Hahaha
The A’s have a road record of 13-7 as of Monday morning, May 5th. They would be a wild card team if the season ended now. Go, Sacramento A’s! Ignoring the background noise from the haters.
Wilson will be ROY.
Its going to be a dogfight with Campbell
Don’t forget Rooker, Soderstrom, Miller, Butler, Langaliers. Front office has been fabulous with “hands tied behind them “.
Angels dont play in LA
Nfl jets & giants have never played in new york
Its all abt marketing & promotion & $$$
They’re winning the WS first year in Vegas
Fingers are crossed
Never gonna happen if Fischer is still the owner
In Vegas, he will probably make more money.
He is the type of owner that will not put the money back into the team no matter what he makes. Look at what he has done. He didn’t even use the balance money until he was literally forced to by rules. That will not change no matter where the team goes.
rawjays
Bold prediction. They have the best road record in MLB at 13-7 and if the season ended now, they would be a WC team, just two games behind Seattle. Seattle has great pitching, the A’s have great hitting.
My prediction is just that they will make the playoffs once or twice during their three years in Sacramento. If they can pick up an ace starting pitcher as a rental, maybe they could make some post-season noise. Go, Sacramento A’s!
You can’t miss that badly if you were a blind monkey throwing darts at a list of random minor leaguers. But if you wanted to hold down arbitration salaries of the prospects you’re getting in return, you would ask other teams for exactly the prospects they got. In other words, it’s easy to make a case that the rebuild’s general failure was financially driven and intentional. Now that they have hope on the horizon in Vegas, they are gettiing more serious about bringing in quality players. And that’s how you end up above .500 at the end of April.
That’s even if they do make it to Vegas.
Where else will they wind up>?
Who knows, but they don’t even have all the funding for a ball park there yet and it was supposed to break ground next month and be ready in 3 years. That sure as hell isn’t happening right now.
You think? There appears to be a heckuva lot of news about the things underway or completed for the Vegas site. It might take a little longer than expected but I don’t see how this thing is stoppable now.
The mayor and the casinos runs LV and get what they want. And Manfred pretty much gets 100% of everything correct. It’s happening.
It won’t, though. I do like how you didn’t mention baseball in your comment, that’s why it’s so wrong and I believe it won’t happen. I’m a baseball fan, not a Manfred/politics/business/stockbroker fan.
I believe baseball, not politics and business, will get what it wants and that this move will fail.
Except of course that they do have all of the funding for the ballpark, as was established last December. The last piece was when US Bank and Goldman Sachs signed their formal agreement to provide the $300 million loan that Fisher was looking for. Prior to signing the agreement, Goldman Sachs and US Bank audited the Fisher family finances and determined that they were more than able to finance the full amount beyond the loan amount and the public funds. The report was presented to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority, which approved the financing plan. They also approved all necessary documents, including the lease and the non-relocation agreement. The lease and all other necessary documents were signed by the Athletics and the Stadium Authority after the meeting. Construction sure as hell will be happening.
Agreed. Things are happening right now. After the lease and the non-relocation agreement were approved by the Stadium Authority last December and signed by both parties, the next step was to get the construction permits from Clark County. The Board of County Commissioners approved the permits for the first two phases of construction three weeks ago.
The mayor has nothing to do with this, and she didn’t get what she wanted. She wanted the stadium to be in the City of Las Vegas, but it’s not. It will be in Unincorporated Clark County, outside of the City’s jurisdiction. Just like the Raiders’ stadium, the Golden Knights’ arena, and even the minor league stadium where the A’s Triple A team plays.
But yes, it’s happening.
I would like to keep the A’s in Sacramento, but I have seen no evidence that Las Vegas is off track. The best Sacramento can hope for is a one extra year delay, keeping them in Sacramento during 2028, and even that is rather unlikely.
Their 1st round picks have been good. Yeah they haven’t got a thing beyond those rounds but the biggest benefit from being bad is the top picks
Rooker was drafted in like the 200th round.
2nd round but was traded twice and claimed off waivers to land with the A’s.
The Pirates rebuild was a dud too and they’re losing
go figure
LAWRENCE BUTLER!
The Destroyer of the Reds. I am a Reds fan, but I think the A’s will be big time winners soon.
That wasn’t a rebuild that was an owner cheaping his way out of a city. To call it anything else is lying to yourself.
hard to get the best value for your assets when it’s a garage sale.
I am calling it what the franchise said it was
Do they teach kids in your area to read between the lines because if they do, you must have failed that class
Yeah, the 700,000-800,000 fans that attended each year made it so lucrative that I am surprised they would afford to sign Ohtani and Soto.
Past that, I think it is fairly common knowledge that small-market teams have to go through periods of rebuilding.
But that said, I am happy for the Athletic fans.
I mean, constantly tearing down the roster year-in and year-out and getting lucky to have Bob Melvin and Billy Beane work their magic since 2006 results in an apathetic and angry fanbase, I understand that.
But that said, I feel bad and sympathetic for the A’s fans.
If you are a fan of a small-market team, you have to accept the reality of the situation. You will have rebuilds.
The way that Cleveland and TB survive is by constantly trading their guys. The teams that try to hang onto their guys, will likely fail.
This is neither rich or poor or anything else. It is just an economic fact of life.
Meanwhile, the Pirates “rebuild” was lauded by talking heads just a couple years ago and instead has so many holes in it, they might as well burn it all down again
A couple of real MLB types on their roster and nothing coming up from the farm anytime soon. Scouting and Player Development departments are the height of incompetence.
You’d think they could have gotten lucky in developing at least one of the kids
Their biggest problem is that they flat out refuse to spend any money at all.
Small market teams can’t afford to be spending large amounts of money on good free agents and are. expected of develop players they drafted.
This organization can’t even do that correctly
Sure they can. Build a winner and you’ll be able to get good free agents. Maybe not in the same sense as the Dodgers obviously, but enough to be able to build a sustainable winner.
It all starts from the top, and Nutting hasn’t been interested in spending the money to hire competent people to start building said winner.
Their biggest problem is that they flat out refuse to spend any money
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That’s ‘a’ problem, but bad drafts were probably a bigger problem. Their 1st rounders over the last several years:
Swaggerty
Priester
Sammy Siani
Gonzalez
Mio-something
Davis
Temarr Johnson
Harrington
They’re relatively young, so it’s too early too write them off, but they also have a combined negative bWAR so far. And they were generally very high picks. They hit on Skenes, but he was the consensus 1/1.
That’s what separates teams like the A’s from turds like the Pirates and White Sox: Effective scouting and player development.
As much as top 10 draft picks help, you have to get hit on them too. I have always said that if you have a good enough development team in the org, you can take draft middle to late round players and make them better if not just as good.. That is a mark of a good development staff, not just getting lucky guessing the right top ten pick (which is still a LOT of guess work).
As a White Sox fan, I envy a team like the A’s, Sure they have not won a world series for a while, but at least they are competitive and have a chance, unlike some orgs where you know that, even if they are good on paper, they will screw it up somehow and that their minor league systems are typically bare.
I mean this is also a team that spends nothing, but always seems to be fairly competitive most seasons and knows when to sell guys AND get average to good back, and making them better, where the teams that had these guys failed to see their talent.
This is a team where if they actually did commit to a few of these guys and on a few high priced vets they could win it all.
I agree 100%. As a RS fan, I always wonder what the difference is between Cleveland and the RS, when it comes to pitching. I think we’ve probably draft about as many pitchers as CL over the past ten years, but Cleveland ALWAYS has someone coming up.
Money doesn’t matter at all. Scouting and player development matter. Despite what Moneyball would make people think – the A’s stink at both. Even blind squirrels find an occasional nut and that seems to be the A’s strategy. I’ve been an A’s fan since I was a kid and the first round busts for the A’s are just horrific. Only an ownership collective over the last 30 years who didn’t care about winning would allow this to continue.
That’s the problem, player development under Cherington has been horrible since he was named GM
SonofDust;
Most rebuilds fail.
That’s a statistical fact.
They subscribed to the Rays’ formula. Ok. Fine. Problem is, their scouting hasn’t been anywhere near that organization’s and their player development has been worse.
I understand the plight of smaller market teams and don’t have pie-in-the-sky dreams of them or any such franchise competing for championships. In that way, perhaps stats are skewed. Milwaukee and Cleveland have embraced the same plan. KC just recently. And they are perennial contenders or competitive, at the very least Yes, everything has to go right to have a good rebuild. Here in Pittsburgh, things seem to always go wrong. Hard not to chalk it up to twin factors of owner stinginess and front office incompetence
SonofDust;
No, the Pirates didn’t subscribe to the Rays formula, they subscribed to the A’s formula… as did the Tigers that did it successsfully.
The Brewers, Guardians ( the 2 you noted) as well as the Royals, Reds, and Marlins are doing the Rays thing.
Disagree, Samuel
Think about their methodology and not their results. They literally jettisoned all of the players whose contracts were no longer affordable. They filled with cheap veterans as they waited for the retooled farm system to mature (Let’s face it, Huntington left the cupboard bare) and gradually brought the kids up
This was the plan all along. They had the blueprint.
Trouble is/was that none of the guys they brought up panned out. And at the same time, their farm system was replenished in terms of numbers but not talent
I’d even disagree about the Tigers and As here. If it’s not the Rays blueprint, it’s along the same lines
18-15. Move Bleday out of CF and trade for a replacement, bring in a starter, and this is a wild card team.
Edit: use Bleday as a platoon corner OF, don’t just kick him off the team.
Denzel Clarke is the A’s next CF’er
Correct. Clarke is looking good in AAA and is a much better defender than Bleday in CF.
I hope so. His defense is very good, and he is an awesome baserunner. However, his hitting is going to be a problem. Denzel Clarke is what Willie Mays Hayes would be if he were 6’4″ and 220 pounds. I’m a Las Vegas Aviators season ticket holder, and I’ve seen all of his home games so far. I have never seen anyone beat out so many ground balls for base hits. But despite his size, he hasn’t hit for power. It’s not just that he hasn’t hit a single home run yet, or that he hasn’t hit a ball to the warning track yet. It’s that he hasn’t hit a ball to within 30 feet of the warning track yet. His speed has kept his batting average up around .290, but I don’t know how that will translate to MLB.
I wanted Bleday in Pittsburgh last season, probably won’t happen but the A’s are starting to have a few extra players and not enough space. Not sure if he is really as bad as the numbers say in CF, but can’t keep him and Soderstrom out there learning left at the same time. It’s crazy how close they are to having a complete lineup already.
You guys can have Brown
lol. They would bring in someone like him. Jack Suwinski= we have Seth Brown at home.
Their defense isn’t good need to figure it out and need another SP , the rebud trades were terrible but finally maybe healthy then hoglund, ginn might be those guys
30 games into the season lol. Might want to wait until at least the all star break before crowning them the world series champs.
Not a single mention of their -20 run differential either. Nobody believes the A’s will maintain a winning record this season, and they truly aren’t playing good baseball anyway.
Look at the games and you will see that run differential is due to a couple guys in that team, not the entire team.
Rebuilds might be more about the numbers of lottery tickets you pick up, not necessarily the quality of the tickets. The A’s picked up Langeliers, Bleday, Sears, and Ginn via trades. That cannot be ignored.
Let’s give it a few more weeks for them to correct this. They aren’t playing good baseball based on their run differential.
This is a great piece, Steve!
The A’s were good from 2012-14, bad from 2015-17, good from 2018-21, and bad from 2022-24. So it seems like lately they’ve alternated between good and bad every 3 (full) seasons.
It really was a dud and it stinks for their old fans and baseball because they don’t do anything the right way. Borderline rob other teams in the revenue share, don’t draft particularly well and really haven’t done the best in trading for prospects, but they did find a few diamonds in the rough that are just old school hard nose players that get the job done. U throw enough darts at the board, eventually one takes a unique path but becomes a bullseye
Is this grit exposing MLB’s prospect hype as overrated?
bravesfan
It really was a dud and it stinks for their old fans and baseball because they don’t do anything the right way.
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A winning record while spending #27 sounds like they might be doing something right.
This is a blip. The A’s have no pitching. They are going to be playing in Coors Field West this summer in West Sacramento and balls are going to fly out of the park. Las Vegas is not going to happen and neither is West Sacramento – the A’s can’t even get 10,000 people to a game in West Sacramento.
With the current political and economic climate everything is stacked against the A’s. Building materials are going to be astronomical due to tariffs in Las Vegas. The economy is so bad and going to get worse – fans or even casual sports fans are not going to spend $35 a seat to watch a game in a AAA park when they are struggling to put food on the table at home. The biggest employer in Sacramento is the state government. There aren’t a lot of jobs that provide superfluous income to waste on going to the ballpark especially when the A’s have overpriced the experience. The A’s have the highest median ticket price in MLB.