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Athletics Designate Drew Avans For Assignment

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The Athletics announced that they have selected the contract of infielder/outfielder Seth Brown, a move that was previously reported. They also recalled catcher Jhonny Pereda. Catcher Shea Langeliers has been placed on the 10-day injured list with a strained left oblique and outfielder Drew Avans has been designated for assignment.

Avans, 29 next week, was added to the roster just over a week ago. His first taste of the major leagues didn’t go especially well. He got into seven games and made 15 plate appearances. He recorded two hits, both singles, with five strikeouts and no walks.

That’s obviously a tiny sample and not much to go on but the A’s probably never envisioned a large role for Avans regardless. He’s never been a highly-touted prospect and only just made it the majors ahead of his 29th birthday. He’ll now head into DFA limbo for a week at most. Since the waiver process takes 48 hours, the A’s could take five days to explore trade interest.

He has generally been a solid Triple-A performer, with a .275/.374/.408 line and 103 wRC+ dating back to the start of the 2021 season. He usually steals 20 to 40 bases annually and can play all three outfield positions.

As for Langeliers, it’s unclear how long he is expected to be out but his IL placement isn’t a surprise. He departed yesterday’s game with a “left flank injury” and was sent for an MRI. Langeliers was previously taking the bulk of the playing time behind the plate with Willie MacIver as the backup. Pereda is up to replace Langeliers but it’s unclear how the club plans to divide the playing time now. It’s also unclear if they have any designs on moving Tyler Soderstrom back behind the plate to cover for Langeliers. Soderstrom was once a catching prospect but has mostly been playing first base in the majors.

Photo courtesy of Allan Henry, Imagn Images

Athletics To Select Seth Brown

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The Athletics are going to call infielder/outfielder Seth Brown back up the majors, reports Martín Gallegos of MLB.com. He was outrighted to Triple-A Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago and will need to be re-selected to the 40-man roster. The A’s will therefore have to make a corresponding move or moves to open room for him there and on the active roster.

Brown’s return to the majors seems to have been caused by him turning on the Game Genie when he got sent down. In nine games for the Aviators, he hit seven home runs, helping him produce a ridiculous .500/.512/1.071 line and 282 wRC+ over 43 plate appearances.

That’s a small sample of work but Brown has been good in the majors before, though obviously not that good. Over 2021 and 2022, he slashed .224/.294/.457 for a wRC+ of 111. Unfortunately, that dropped down in 2023, with a .222/.286/.405 line and 91 wRC+. His struggles continued in 2024 but he finished strong, with a .263/.304/.413 line and 107 wRC+ in the second half.

That prompted the A’s to tender him an arbitration contract for 2025, with the two sides avoiding arb and agreeing to a $2.7MM salary for this year. Through 61 plate appearances, he hit .212/.328/.308 for an 89 wRC+ and got sent down. Players with at least three but less than five years of service time can reject outright assignments but must forfeit their remaining salary to do so. Brown accepted his assignment, hit the crap out of the ball for a while and is now coming back.

Time will tell how the A’s plan to use Brown but it’s possibly related to the Shea Langeliers injury. The catcher left yesterday’s game with a “left flank injury” and was sent for an MRI. It’s possible that he will be placed on the injured list with some kind of oblique injury. If Tyler Soderstrom moves in from first base to take up catching duties again, Brown could factor into the first base/left field/designated hitter mix alongside Brent Rooker, JJ Bleday and Drew Avans.

Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin, Oncea-Imagn Images

Athletics Outright Seth Brown

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First baseman/outfielder Seth Brown has been sent outright to Triple-A Las Vegas, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. That indicates he cleared waivers after being designated for assignment last week.

Brown has the right to elect free agency but is unlikely to do so. Players with at least three years of service time have the right to reject outright assignments and head to the open market. However, a player with less than five years of service would have to forfeit his remaining salary in order to exercise that right. Brown is in between those two markers. He and the A’s avoided arbitration in the offseason by agreeing to a $2.7MM salary. He presumably wants to keep that money flowing and will therefore report to Vegas.

For the A’s, they will hold onto Brown as a relatively expensive non-roster depth piece, though one with some major league success under his belt. He hit .224/.294/.457 for a 111 wRC+ during the 2021 and 2022 seasons. He dipped in 2023, producing a .222/.286/.405 line and 91 wRC+.

His 2024 was fairly similar to his 2023 but with a strong finish. He hit .202/.263/.347 for a 77 wRC+ in the first half but then had a .263/.304/.413 line and 107 wRC+ in the second half. That gave the A’s enough confidence to tender him a contract going into 2025, but that bet hasn’t paid off thus far. He hit .212/.328/.308 for an 89 wRC+ before getting designated for assignment last week.

Due to that performance and his salary, no club was willing to take him on. He’ll now look to get back in a groove and work his way back to the majors, as he did in 2024. The A’s are giving some playing time to fairly inexperienced players like Denzel Clarke and Logan Davidson, so it’s entirely possible that they decide to send those guys back to the minors at some point. And as always, an injury could arise at any time, which could lead to Brown getting called back up.

Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea, Imagn Images

Athletics Designate Seth Brown For Assignment, Option JJ Bleday

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The Athletics announced a huge batch of roster moves today. They selected the contracts of catcher Willie MacIver and infielder Logan Davidson. They also recalled left-hander Jacob Lopez, infielder CJ Alexander and outfielder Denzel Clarke. Infielder Gio Urshela was placed on the 10-day injured list with a strained left hamstring, opening one spot. They opened three more by optioning right-hander Carlos Durán, catcher Jhonny Pereda and outfielder JJ Bleday to Triple-A Las Vegas. They opened a fifth active roster spot by designating infielder/outfielder Seth Brown for assignment. That also opened one 40-man spot for MacIver/Davidson. A second was opened by transferring infielder Zack Gelof to the 60-day IL.

The Clarke, Urshela and Davidson moves had been previously reported. Jeff Passan of ESPN reported the Clarke promotion last night and hinted that more moves could be coming, with the A’s looking to shake things up and snap a nine-game losing streak. That has certainly come to pass.

Brown, 32, has been a productive player for the A’s before but has fallen off. He hit 45 home runs between the 2021 and 2022 campaigns, slashing .224/.294/.457 for a 111 wRC+. However, he has a line of .224/.286/.385 and a wRC+ of 90 since then. That includes a .192/.311/.288 line and 79 wRC+ this year.

He was outrighted off the roster last summer but earned his way back to the big leagues. He played well enough in the second half that the A’s tendered him an arbitration contract for 2025 and the two sides avoided arbitration by agreeing to a $2.7MM salary.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Brown is not quite in a position to both elect free agency and keep that money coming to him. Players with at least three years of big league service have the right to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency, but players with less than five years have to forfeit their remaining salary in order to do so. Brown came into this year with four years and 96 days of service time, putting him 76 days shy of the five-year mark. 57 days have passed in the 2025 season so far. Based on his performance, he probably won’t get claimed off waivers. More likely, he will clear and accept an outright assignment, allowing the A’s to keep him around as non-roster depth.

Bleday, 27, seemed to be having a breakout last year. The former top prospect hit 20 home runs and slashed .243/.324/.437 on the year for a 120 wRC+. Defensively, he was miscast as a center fielder but the offensive performance was certainly encouraging. Unfortunately, he is slashing .204/.291/.365 for an 86 wRC+ so far this year.

It’s possible there’s some luck in there. His batting average on balls in play was .279 last year but is down to .231 here in 2025. His barrel rate is down but his average exit velocity and hard hit rate are actually higher than last year. His strikeout rate has ticked up a bit but he’s also been walking more.

Regardless, the A’s are seemingly going to try Clarke in center for a while. Bleday can try to get into a groove in the Pacific Coast League and perhaps return to the big leagues after a bit of a refresher. He came into this season with his service count at 2.055. If he stays down the rest of the year, he won’t get to the three-year mark in 2025, delaying his path to free agency. But if he’s recalled in the not-too-distant future, he’ll still have a shot to get there.

Amid the rest of the shuffle, MacIver gets called to the big leagues for the first time. The A’s have Shea Langeliers as their primary catcher but Pereda has been backing him up lately. With today’s swap, it seems MacIver will get a shot at holding that backup job.

The 28-year-old MacIver was drafted by the Rockies way back in 2018, in the ninth round, and has been grinding in the minors since then. He reached free agency after 2024 and signed a minor league deal with the A’s coming into 2025. He has put up a monster .389/.469/.548 line in 147 Triple-A plate appearances this year. His .480 BABIP is surely not sustainable but his 12.2% walk rate and 18.4% strikeout rate are both good figures.

As for Gelof, he began the season on the 10-day IL due to hamate surgery. He started a rehab assignment at the end of April but that lasted just three games before he was pulled off due to a stress reaction in his ribs. He hasn’t started a new rehab assignment yet. His 60-day count is retroactive to his initial IL placement, so is technically eligible for reinstatement a few days from now. However, that doesn’t seem likely, as he’ll surely need a few weeks of minor league games at some point to get into game shape.

Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea, Imagn Images

Athletics, Seth Brown Avoid Arbitration

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The Athletics and first baseman/outfielder Seth Brown have avoided arbitration by agreeing to a one-year contract for the 2025 season, per a club announcement. While the team didn’t announce financial components of the deal, The Associated Press reports that Brown will make a $2.7MM salary.

Brown, 32, looked as though he was no longer in the A’s plans midseason when he was passed through waivers unclaimed. He accepted an outright assignment to Triple-A, so as not to forfeit the remainder of last year’s $2.6MM salary, but Brown caught fire in the minors and hit his way back up to the big leagues in short order.

At the time of his removal from the 40-man roster, Brown was hitting just .189/.251/.306 through 195 plate appearances. He erupted with a .403/.416/.736 slash and seven homers in 77 Triple-A plate appearances, however, and found himself back on the big league roster less than a month later. From the time he returned to the majors through season’s end, Brown hit .271/.312/.448 in a sample of 205 plate appearances that was nearly identical to his early-season struggles.

That proved enough to keep Brown in the team’s plans for at least another year, it seems. The lefty-swinging slugger figures to again split his time between first base and the outfield corners, while Brent Rooker takes the majority of plate appearances at designated hitter. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projected a $3.8MM salary for Brown in free agency, though deals hammered out prior to the non-tender deadline (known as “pre-tender” deals) often come with salaries south of projections. Teams have more leverage prior to the non-tender deadline and thus will frequently present offers in what’s effectively “take it or leave it” fashion, with the “leave it” option representing a non-tender.

Brown has now had consecutive disappointing seasons at the plate, but he popped 45 homers in 261 games with the A’s from 2021-22. He’s a .225/.289/.426 hitter (102 wRC+) in 1640 plate appearances dating back to the 2021 season.

Athletics Outright Gerardo Reyes

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Aug. 9: The A’s announced that Reyes went unclaimed on waivers and has been assigned outright to Triple-A Las Vegas. He’s been outrighted in the past and thus has the option to reject the assignment in favor of free agency.

Aug. 7: The Athletics announced that they have reinstated right-hander Mason Miller from the 15-day injured list and recalled infielder Armando Alvarez from Triple-A Las Vegas. In corresponding moves, they placed outfielder/first baseman Seth Brown on the paternity list and designated righty Gerardo Reyes for assignment.

Miller has been one of the best relievers on the planet this year with a 2.21 earned run average in 40 2/3 innings. He has struck out a massive 45.8% of batters faced while keeping his walks to a reasonable 9.2% level and also getting grounders on 40.6% of balls in play. He has secured 15 saves in 17 opportunities on the year.

He’s been on the IL for a couple of weeks now due to a fractured pinkie finger in his left hand. There was some initial confusion about how the injury came about, but manager Mark Kotsay confirmed that Miller had struck a padded table in frustration, in video relayed on X by A’s on NBCS. Though it’s disappointing when injuries come about in such fashion, Miller has thankfully returned after a minimal absence. Since the injury was to his non-throwing hand, he initially wasn’t able to squeeze his glove but was able to throw while on the shelf.

While Miller was out of action, the club traded Lucas Erceg to the Royals and selected Reyes to take his spot on the roster. Reyes has since tossed four innings for the A’s, only allowing two earned runs despite issuing three walks and only punching out two opponents. It seems he wasn’t part of the club’s long-term plans and has been nudged off the 40-man roster since he’s out of options.

Since the trade deadline has passed, the A’s will place him on waivers in the coming days. He now has a 7.13 ERA in 41 2/3 major league innings but has generally been better in the minors. That includes 33 Triple-A innings prior to his call-up this year with a 3.82 ERA. His 12.1% walk rate in that time was high but he punched out 36.4% of batters faced. If any club puts in a claim, Reyes has less than a year of service time and can therefore be cheaply retained beyond the current campaign.

Athletics Select Seth Brown

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The Athletics announced that catcher/first baseman Tyler Soderstrom has been placed on the 10-day injured list, with first baseman/outfielder Seth Brown selected to the roster to replace him. The club already had three vacancies on their 40-man thanks to recently outrighting Aaron Brooks as well as releasing Aledmys Díaz and Sean Newcomb, so the count now climbs to 38. Soderstrom has a left wrist bone bruise, per Martín Gallegos of MLB.com on X.

It’s unclear how long the club expects Soderstrom to be out. Clubs sometimes have a quick trigger when it comes to IL stints around the All-Star break. Due to the four off-days, Soderstrom could theoretically return after a minimal stint and miss fewer games than an IL stint at any other point in the season. Perhaps further reporting will shed some more light on the situation.

Regardless of the details on that, Brown gets back to the majors. He was outrighted off the roster last month after a rough start to the season wherein he slashed .189/.251/.306 while striking out in 33.8% of his 195 plate appearances.

He reported to Triple-A Las Vegas and has been tearing the cover off the ball. He hit seven home runs in 16 games for the Aviators and produced a batting line of .403/.416/.736. Part of that is surely due to the hitter-friendly environment of the Pacific Coast League as well as his .423 batting average on balls in play, but it’s a nice bounceback nonetheless.

Brown hit 45 homers for the A’s over the 2021 and 2022 seasons, leading to a line of .224/.294/.457 and 112 wRC+. Last year, he hit just 14 homers and his line of .222/.286/.405 dragged his wRC+ down to 92. Then, as mentioned, he had an awful start to the 2024 season.

His recent showing with the Aviators was a small sample and surely he can’t maintain that insane pace, but it would be nice for the A’s if he could simply be back around his 2021-22 form. He won’t be a big part of the rebuilding club’s future since he turns 32 years old this Saturday, but he could be a deadline trade candidate if he’s in good form at the plate. He also has some versatility, capable of playing passable defense at first base or in an outfield corner. He is making $2.6MM this year and can be controlled via arbitration for two seasons beyond this one.

A’s Outright Seth Brown

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The A’s announced they’ve selected Tyler Nevin onto the MLB roster. To open space on the active roster, they sent outfielder Seth Brown through outright waivers. Oakland also confirmed their previously-reported recall of outfielder Lawrence Butler and designation of veteran infielder J.D. Davis for assignment. The club’s 40-man roster count drops to 39.

There’d been no prior indication that Brown had been removed from the 40-man roster. The A’s evidently placed him on waivers after Sunday’s game without announcing the move. The 31-year-old has already gone unclaimed and will almost certainly stick in the organization with Triple-A Las Vegas.

Brown has upwards of three years of service time, which gives him the right to decline the Triple-A assignment in favor of free agency. He has yet to reach five years in the majors, though, so testing free agency would require him to forfeit what remains of this year’s $2.6MM arbitration salary. He wouldn’t match that sum on the open market, making it an easy call to report to the Aviators and try to play his way back to the big leagues later in the season.

The lefty-hitting Brown has had a sharp drop in production over the last couple seasons. He slumped to a .222/.286/.405 slash across 378 plate appearances a year ago. The past couple months have been among the worst of his career. Brown has punched out more than a third of the time while hitting just .189/.251/.306 across 195 trips to the dish. He owns a .210/.274/.371 line going back to the start of the 2023 campaign.

That’s well below the form he showed in the preceding two seasons. While Brown has never hit left-handed pitching, he was a solid power threat against righties from 2021-22. The former 19th-round pick took 737 plate appearances versus right-handers over that stretch. He popped 41 home runs, 35 doubles and four triples en route to a .483 slugging percentage. An elevated strikeout rate kept his on-base percentage at a modest .304 clip, but the power made him an above-average hitter when he carried the platoon advantage.

While that once looked like it’d make Brown a potentially intriguing trade target for teams seeking an affordable lefty bat, his performance over the past year and a half sapped any trade value. It now seems likely the A’s won’t find a taker for Brown at all. Even assuming he sticks in the organization for now, he’d be a minor league free agent next offseason if he’s not first reselected onto the 40-man roster. Brown would still be eligible for arbitration for two more seasons if the A’s were to call him back up, but they presumably wouldn’t tender him a contract to match or exceed this year’s salary.

In the short term, the A’s will take their second look at Nevin. Oakland outrighted the righty hitter a couple weeks ago. Nevin quickly hit his way back, running a .296/.365/.667 line in 14 Triple-A contests. Claimed off waivers from the Orioles at the start of the season, Nevin appeared in 40 games for Oakland before being designated for assignment. He hit .220/.307/.341 with four homers while splitting his defensive work between all four corner spots.

Nevin steps into Davis’ place as a right-handed bench bat. He could take a few at-bats from the switch-hitting Abraham Toro at third base and/or the lefty-swinging Butler, who is likely to step into Brown’s spot as the primary right fielder. Nevin is out of options, so the A’s would again need to pass him through waivers if they want to take him off the MLB roster at any point.

Possible Left-Handed Power Targets For Nationals

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The Nationals haven’t made many notable acquisitions this offseason. They signed middle reliever Dylan Floro and former top prospect Nick Senzel to affordable one-year pacts and plucked infielder Nasim Nuñez from the Marlins in the Rule 5 draft. It’s not all that surprising that a still-rebuilding Washington team coming off a 71-91 showing hasn’t been aggressive, but GM Mike Rizzo had suggested at the Winter Meetings the team was open to a multi-year free agent pickup “in the right situation” (link via Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com).

With all of $4.25MM in free agent spending committed to Floro and Senzel, there should still be financial room at Rizzo’s disposal. That doesn’t guarantee they’ll hand out any kind of significant deal, particularly with a lack of great options in the middle tiers of free agency. Yet it’d be a surprise if the Nationals were finished with their offseason activity. One area where some kind of addition seems likely: a left-handed bat.

Both the Talk Nats blog and MLB.com’s Jessica Camerato suggested in late December that Washington was looking to bring in left-handed power. The Nats’ best lefty or switch-hitting bats — CJ Abrams, Keibert Ruiz, Luis García and Jake Alu — all have middling pop. Only the Guardians had a lower ISO (slugging minus batting average) against right-handed pitching in 2023. Acquiring a lefty power source makes plenty of sense.

It’s hard to see Washington spending at the level it’d take to land Cody Bellinger. Even though he’s young enough to be a veteran cornerstone for a team that could more realistically seek to compete by 2025, the Nationals have a pair of top center field prospects in James Wood and Dylan Crews. They’re also still faced with the MASN rights uncertainty and on the hook for significant money to Patrick Corbin, Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer’s deferrals in the short term. It’s probably not the right time for a top-of-the-market splash.

We’ll look a few tiers down. Where might that search lead Rizzo and company?

Free Agency

  • Brandon Belt: Belt, even going into his age-36 season, should command the loftiest guarantee of the players in this group. He’s coming off a very strong offensive showing for the Blue Jays. He hit 19 homers and walked more than 15% of the time he stepped to the plate, leading to a .254/.369/.490 line through 404 plate appearances. Favorable matchups played a role in that strong rate production; Toronto limited him to 39 PA’s against left-handed pitching. Washington could deploy him similarly at designated hitter and/or first base, where only Joey Meneses (coming off a league average offensive showing) stands in the way.
  • Joc Pederson: The Blue Jays are the only club publicly tied to Pederson this winter. He’s coming off a middling season in which he hit .235/.348/.416 with 15 homers through 425 plate appearances for the Giants. That’s not huge power production at first glance, but Pederson has five 20+ homer seasons on his résumé (four with at least 25 longballs). He made hard contact — an exit velocity of at least 95 MPH — on more than half his batted balls last season, a top 15 rate in the majors. Pederson is a limited player. He’s best served as a DH and is mostly limited to facing right-handed pitching. He still has life in the bat, though, even if last year’s results were underwhelming.
  • Eddie Rosario: There hasn’t been any public chatter on Rosario since the Braves declined a $9MM option at the start of the offseason. He should command a one-year deal at a salary that’s not too far below that rate. Rosario is coming off a reasonably effective year. He hit 21 homers with a .255/.305/.450 line in 516 trips to the plate. That was the fourth time in his career that he surpassed 20 longballs. Rosario is mostly limited to left field but rated reasonably well with the glove last year. His performance varies wildly within seasons, but he tends to produce roughly league average numbers by the end.
  • Joey Gallo: Gallo hit 21 homers in just 332 plate appearances a season ago. The flaw in his game, huge swing-and-miss rates, has only magnified in recent seasons. Gallo hasn’t hit above the Mendoza line since 2019. He’s hitting .168 with a .290 on-base percentage in 742 plate appearances over the last two campaigns. There are a lot of uncompetitive at-bats. Few players fit the profile of a “left-handed power bat” quite like Gallo, though.

Trade Possibilities

It’s tougher to identify great fits on the trade market in the absence of many clear rebuilding teams. The Nationals could theoretically take a bigger swing at a player with an extended control window (e.g. Alec Burleson, Jesús Sánchez). That’s not an easy task to pull off, particularly since Washington is probably reluctant to part with significant prospect talent. There are a few veteran bats who’d make some sense as speculative trade candidates for a lesser return.

  • Josh Bell: Bell had a productive stint over his year and a half in Washington from 2021-22. He hit .278/.363/.483 in just over 1000 plate appearances before being included in the Juan Soto trade. Bell has changed uniforms twice more since that deadline blockbuster, signing with the Guardians before being flipped to the Marlins last summer. The switch-hitting first baseman struggled in Cleveland (.233/.318/.383) but generally turned things around in South Florida (.270/.338/.480). That reasonably strong finish wasn’t enough for Bell to forego a $16.5MM player option for the upcoming season. It stands to reason the Fish would be happy to get out from under the bulk of that deal if the Nationals were interested in a reunion.
  • Seth Brown: A’s GM David Forst indicated at the beginning of the offseason that he didn’t expect to trade Brown. That’s presumably more about Oakland feeling that other teams won’t meet their ask than an indication they wouldn’t consider offers on a 31-year-old platoon player. Brown is a career .237/.305/.471 hitter against right-handed pitching. He can play first base or the corner outfield and is under arbitration control for three seasons. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz forecasts him for a $2.4MM salary.
  • Mike Yastrzemski: Yastrzemski is projected for a $7.3MM salary in his second-to-last arbitration season. He hit 15 homers in 381 plate appearances a year ago, running a .233/.330/.445 line overall. The Giants aren’t likely to urgently shop Yastrzemski, but the singing of Jung Hoo Lee pushes him from center field to the corner opposite Michael Conforto. Trading Mitch Haniger paved the way for a Lee, Conforto, Yastrzemski outfield supplemented by righty-hitting Austin Slater, but the Giants also have Luis Matos, Wade Meckler and Heliot Ramos as options on the grass.

Minor League Deal Candidates

Each of these players has turned in above-average offense from the left side in their careers. None hit free agency under great circumstances. Choi had an injury-plagued 2023 campaign that kept him to 39 games without much production. The other four players were either non-tendered or elected free agency after an outright.

Meadows has missed most of the past two seasons attending to anxiety; it is unclear if he’ll be in position to return next year. Ford and Vogelbach are largely limited to DH, while Walsh hasn’t been the same since he was diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome in 2022. None of these players are likely to be Washington’s top acquisition, but they’d be viable depth targets if the Nats wanted a second lefty bat on a minor league or low-cost MLB pact.

A’s Don’t Expect To Trade Paul Blackburn, Seth Brown

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A’s general manager David Forst chatted with reporters on Monday evening, discussing a few areas of the roster. Perhaps most notably, the GM said he didn’t expect to trade either starter Paul Blackburn or outfielder Seth Brown this offseason (relayed by John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle).

Blackburn has been the subject of trade speculation as far back as the 2022 deadline. The right-hander has turned in serviceable back-of-the-rotation numbers for the past two seasons, combining to post a 4.35 ERA in 215 innings. That has arguably made him Oakland’s most reliable starter, although he battled some injuries on his throwing hand late in 2022 and early in the ’23 campaign.

The A’s control Blackburn, who turned 30 on Monday, for two additional seasons. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects him for a $3.2MM arbitration salary. Brown, who is controllable for three years, is projected at $2.4MM. The lefty-swinging corner outfielder had a down season in 2023, hitting .222/.286/.405 in 378 plate appearances. He’d posted a more robust .230/.305/.444 showing — albeit mostly in favorable platoon situations — the year before.

Those are modest salaries by MLB standards, but there’d been some speculation that the A’s could look to tear spending down even further. Forst suggested that’s not the case, telling reporters he anticipates opening next season with a higher payroll than they ran to end the 2023 campaign.

Of course, that’s not exactly portending massive spending. The A’s ended last year with a payroll in the $59MM range, as calculated by Roster Resource. That was the lowest mark in MLB. Forst estimated their current commitments for next season sit around $43MM, a little north of the $40MM which Roster Resource projects.

That leaves some amount of flexibility to dip into free agency, although they’d surely be for players in the lower tiers. Last offseason’s acquisitions of Aledmys Díaz, Jace Peterson, Trevor May, Drew Rucinski, Jesús Aguilar and Shintaro Fujinami were all one- or two-year commitments that tallied a little over $40MM in overall spending.

Forst suggested that adding to a rotation without many clear candidates behind Blackburn and JP Sears was likely (link via Martín Gallegos of MLB.com). The GM made clear they’re looking to wait out the market for what is likely to be a low-cost veteran flier. “This time of year, the market is peaking,” Forst said. “It’s expensive, nowhere more than starting pitching, which is something we’re out there talking about. We are trying to be patient. I think we know with what we have to spend and what we need to do, patience is probably our friend here.”

One player who doesn’t seem likely to be part of the rotation competition: right-hander Mason Miller. Forst suggested the A’s were planning to move him to the bullpen, potentially as a closer, for the ’24 season (via Gallegos). One of the hardest throwers in the sport, Miller has been limited by injuries as a professional. He pitched only 39 1/3 innings over parts of three minor league seasons and was limited to 33 1/3 frames during his MLB debut this year, missing a good chunk of time with forearm tightness. A relief role will allow the A’s to keep a close watch on his workload next season, although Forst left open the possibility of stretching him back out as a starter in 2025.

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