The Athletics and infielder Michael Stefanic have agreed to a minor league deal, according to Kiley McDaniel of ESPN. The deal comes with an invite to big league Spring Training for the upcoming season.
Stefanic, 30 in February, has made cameos at the big league level in each of the past four MLB seasons. Signed as an undrafted free agent by the Angels back in 2018, Stefanic played in the lower levels of the minors for a little over the year before the cancelled minor league season in 2020 wiped out a year of development. When he returned in 2021, he looked nothing short of excellent in the upper minors with a .336/.408/.493 slash line between the Double- and Triple-A levels. He struck out at just a 13.9% clip while walking 9.4% of the time. He hit for a bit of power in addition to that discipline, swatting 17 homers and 26 doubles in 125 games.
Stefanic’s minor league numbers have generally been more of the same; in five seasons at the Triple-A level, he’s a career .332/.427/.454 hitter. While he hasn’t come close to showing as much power as he did back in 2021, his contact and discipline has remained excellent for his level and allowed him to succeed with a contact-over-power profile while playing primarily second base but logging time all over the infield. Unfortunately for Stefanic, his game simply hasn’t translated at the big league level in the limited opportunities he’s received.
The 30-year-old is a career .227/.314/.267 hitter across 99 games and 289 plate appearances in the majors. His best stint at the big league level came with the Angels in 2023, when he slashed a solid .290/.380/.355 across 25 games. Those are excellent on-base numbers, but he was helped by a .333 BABIP he hasn’t been able to replicate since thanks to a paltry 22.2% Hard-Hit rate and a barrel rate of 0.0%. That complete lack of power is difficult to make work in the majors; Luis Arraez is virtually the only player in the modern game to find any sort of sustained success with that sort of approach, although others like Nick Madrigal have been able to hold their own in smaller samples.
The A’s will bring Stefanic in as some much-needed infield depth behind a group that is largely unproven outside of AL Rookie of the Year runner-up Jacob Wilson. Max Muncy was unable to make an impact in 63 games for the club this year, while Zack Gelof hasn’t impressed at the big league level since his debut 2023 season due to injuries and ineffectiveness. Players like Darell Hernaiz, Max Schuemann, and Brett Harris could provide depth behind that group, but adding another option like Stefanic makes some sense given a thin market for infield talent this winter and the Athletics’ typical lack of resources. If the A’s don’t manage to bring in another infield bat to their mix this winter, it wouldn’t be a shock to see Stefanic compete with someone like Schuemann for a bench job headed into camp this spring.
He can hit.