It’s been a long season for the Oakland A’s, though thankfully it’s going better for my fantasy baseball teams. The trade deadline is past and now we know who will be around for at least the rest of the season and then we get to wonder again who might get traded. The A’s farm system has been restocked between the trades and the draft and now it certainly feels like a top half of the league system, which will only get better as the A’s have a top 5 pick in the 2023 draft and other trades happen before they return to competitiveness in 2024 or 2025.
The major league squad hasn’t had too many bright spots this year despite plenty of younger players getting a shot. Sean Murphy, Ramón Laureano, Seth Brown, and Elvis Andrus have been competent enough that the lineup isn’t too bad when all four are playing, but beyond that it’s been tough sledding. Nick Allen and Cristian Pache have been bad enough with the bat to accrue negative fWAR and Kevin Smith has followed up his 46 wRC+ in MLB with an even worse mark in AAA. Jonah Bride has been mildly surprising as a player who forced his way onto the roster, but has also been extremely bad at the plate in the majors. Skye Bolt could be the strong side of a platoon, but I’m not sure the A’s are in a position to platoon him with anyone so we’ll just have see how he does from both sides of the plate.
The pitchers have been more encouraging with Paul Blackburn taking a rather large step forward (before taking one back), Cole Irvin remaining a quality starter, and some emerging bullpen arms in Zach Jackson (despite control issues), AJ Puk, and Dany Jimenez. The bad news is Kaprielian has taken a step back by striking out far fewer hitters and walking about the same amount, Daulton Jefferies is hurt again, and nobody has really stepped up to take the fifth starter spot out of Adrian Martinez, Adam Oller, Zach Logue, Kirby Snead, and Jared Koenig. To be fair to Oller, he’s strung together some decent starts recently after being a total wreck earlier in the season and hopefully he and some others can finish strong.
On the minor league side of things, it’s encouraging and I would generally encourage any A’s fan to follow Melissa Lockard and Nathaniel Stoltz for high level prospect coverage. They do a great job covering and contextualizing the system and what players are working on throughout the season. Overall I think it’s been an encouraging year for the system, particularly for position players, with players breaking out, bouncing back, and making adjustments to improve. Unfortunately for the pitchers, there have been a lot of injuries and some players losing their stuff, but there’s still reasons for hope with them. Thankfully a lot of the injuries have only kept pitchers out for weeks instead of months and we’re already seeing some return before the end of the season.
The upper crust position player prospects have all at least held serve as Langeliers has been good enough in AAA to elicit thoughts of trading Sean Murphy, Soderstrom bounced back from a slow start to be promoted to Midland, and Gelof has been solid and adjusted well to AA despite missing time with an injury to his non-throwing shoulder. Max Muncy has acquitted himself well and reached high A ball, making me a fan despite still rating Carson Williams higher. The biggest breakout of the season has certainly been Brett Harris, reaching AA in his first full season amid newfound offensive success and solid defense. Although he hasn’t made Fangraphs’ list and is only 26th on MLB Pipeline, I would rate him as a 40 FV overall and ranked in the low 20s.
A lot of the other hitters of note this year have been bounce back players with Logan Davidson, Kyle McCann, and Austin Beck all regaining prospect status to varying degrees. Between those players and the reported midseason adjustments working out well for Junior Perez and Lawrence Butler, it’s been a win for A’s hitter dev this year.
The A’s draft seemed good and analysts generally agreed, though it was tarnished in my eyes when they failed to sign Brock Rodden (10th), Christian Oppor (11th) and Derek True (20th). Failing to sign Oppor is especially disappointing considering his college commitment is to Gulf Coast State College and junior college commitments are generally considered signable. However they seemed to add some high level outfielders and added to the already strong catching depth with Daniel Susac, their first round pick. I’m skeptical of Henry Bolte’s swing and miss issues, but hopefully the strides and adjustments made with other hitters carry over to him.
I will go into more detail with my shadow draft, but there weren’t as many players that I really loved in this draft as in others. I ended up a pretty big fan of Drew Gilbert, but that came on late as he rose up some boards, and others that I liked such as Chris Paciolla, Drew Thorpe, and Chandler Pollard never really made a move up boards during the draft cycle. There still ended up being guys I liked relative to the consensus board I made, but nobody in the first round that I had to have and Pollard was really the only player I would have given a significantly higher bonus to than what he got in real life.
The Ottoneu baseball season has gone pretty well for me as I’m sitting in the top half of all of my leagues and have been in the top quarter of each for most of the year. I’m in four this year - one Fangraphs points head to head league, one Fangraphs points season long 12 team league with some add-ons, one Fangraphs points season long 20 team league, and one traditional 5x5 12 team league but with no prospects allowed. It’s fun seeing how the different formats impact valuation and while the 5x5 and 20 team league squads have fluctuated more than the others, I’m happy with each. First place is out of reach for the 12 team FG points season long league, but I’m in a fight for second and only dropped to second recently after some hitters and Josh Hader hit prolonged funks. The head to head league is my best chance at a title since it’s both my best team and has playoffs, so I’ll have a chance regardless. It would be very sweet to win that one since I’m facing off with my brother and another friend