Living Like Larry

 

I know people are acting like this isn't strange, but this is strange to me. After years of letting numerous building block players leave in trades and free agency, John Fisher signed Lawrence Butler to a deal that will last until 2031, solely after a breakthrough season of Butler's where he hit 22 home runs and 57 RBIs, most towards the second half of the season. Butler will be a marquee star for the A's over the next several years, which include multiple seasons playing without a stated location in a minor league park in Sacramento, and eventually in a massive dome in Las Vegas, assuming it actually gets made. 

And I'm not disparaging Butler. I'm not. Dude's a great player, could be terrific in a full career. But if you have the opportunity to extend Matt Chapman, Matt Olson, Marcus Semien, Sean Murphy, Sonny Gray, Sean Manaea, Liam Hendriks and Mark Canha...and you don't take it, and then you give an extension to the first guy that does more than 'mediocre' for your club...that's not gonna look great for you. That just means you're trying to learn but you're not actually learning. That's George Steinbrenner seeing Hideo Nomo succeeding in LA and getting Hideki Irabu. That's Aaron Boone hearing the calls for Dominguez and calling up Duke Ellis. That's Ross Atkins losing out on Sasaki and Soto and getting Anthony Santander. Now you're just trying to catch up, but are you really making the best decisions?

What I will not fault Fisher for is his tenacity in signing free agents and trading for big pieces. This offseason, the A's had holes in their rotation, so they signed Luis Severino and traded for Jeffrey Springs. Both starters have been excellent in their opening starts, going 6 innings, giving up 0 runs, 3 hits each and striking out 6 [Sevvy] and 9 [Springs] batters. Even if the A's are starting people like Osvaldo Bido and Joey Estes while their opponents sport better rotations, they have more efficiency than they have in a while. If Springs stays healthy, which is a tall order, that's an All-Star right there. Granted, I suppose he's a little relieved to be out of the bay area given his well-reported stance against frivolity, but he's still a very good guy to have around. We're coming off several seasons where their big standout was J.P. Sears, and now the pressure's off of him a bit.

You're also seeing, in addition to Butler, young guys coming into their own and dominating. Max Muncy was an Opening Day callup, he's already got a home run. Tyler Soderstrom already has 2 homers and 3 RBIs, determined to finally achieve a full MLB campaign. Jacob Wilson's already hitting well. JJ Bleday had a great outfield catch the other day. And there in the corner is Brent Rooker, also the recipient of a very nice extension, still hitting enough to earn it. This team is closer to good than it's been in a while, and they're very close to 'underdog competitor' difference. It won't be clear for 4 months how they match up against Detroit and Cleveland, but they might have something this year, which would be a relief for the fans if Fisher hadn't alienated them all last year. 

Somebody online posted something to the effect of 'imagine if the A's make the playoffs and to accommodate fans they're forced to play home playoff games at the Oakland Coliseum'. I want that to happen. Make Fisher sweat. 

Coming Tonight: 2024 proved he had staying power, but can 2025 prove he's a trusted Rockies battery member going forward?

The Sunday of Suffering

 

I wanna bring you guys back to last weekend for a moment. Right before the All-Star Break. This was the moment something completely indescribable happened to me, and a friend, that I feel only existed as part of some wild cosmic justice. There was no sense in this. It still baffles me. But it happened.

So. I'm following the Phils game, and it's been a wild couple days. I was at the Park Friday night, Phils-A's, expecting, logically I might add, for the Phillies to be able to do something against one of the worst teams in baseball. I was mistaken. The A's roughed up Ranger Suarez, the bats were silenced, runners were left on base, the umps were screwing us and we looked pathetic. A's I had never heard of were getting RBIs. And then Lawrence Butler, who's been very meh this year, comes off the bench and hits a homer late. Like, to add insult to injury, here's a guy that could have been here the whole time kicking the shit out of us now.

The Saturday game was much better. I watched that game in a colleague's backyard, several beers crushed enjoying the moment. Tyler Phillips, the starter, was a local product, and he was pitching beautifully. The offense kept making it even more of a stretch for Oakland. It was an incredible moment, and perhaps the single most triumphant thing to come out of Pennsylvania that day.

But that Sunday, the day after, was something different. I was gonna have the Phils game on in the other room, and a good friend of mine, who comes from a family of Mets fans, was going to his first game at CitiField. I'd been wanting him to go for a while, that's a great stadium, and he was finally getting there. The Mets were playing the Rockies, who had German Marquez back but were still a last place team. I told him it'd likely be an easy win. 

The Phillies...for the umpteenth time during the runup to the ASG break, failed to appear. And not only were the A's on again, but they were crushing Michael Mercado. Evidently Phillips won the fifth starting position that day, because Mercado got chased by a triple-A team. But what was even more crucial was that Lawrence Butler who, again, had a really slow start to the season...had a three-homer day against us. Butler could power hit, I knew that, but 3 in one day against the best team in the NL? He had five homers before the Phils series, and he left with nine. We turned his season around. Good for us.

So I checked the Mets game, because I was at least hoping my friend Marc got something nice out of that day, and Pete Alonso had decked one early so I figured there was a shot. No...no, Jose Quintana got chased and the Rockies were leading. Even stranger, Michael Toglia, a corner guy so mediocre that I had no idea he'd even gotten to 13 homers by July...had himself...a three-homer day. The guy's hitting .190 and he hit 3 home runs against the Mets.

So let's recap. Two different obscure young guys for two terrible teams had three-homer games against teams that were better than them, on the same day. And of course they were the two games I had a vested interest in that day. I don't know what this says about Butler or Toglia or anything, but...it was just wild. The harbingers of doom are two people that no one would expect to have three-homer days.

The Rockies and A's aren't gonna have many other moments of pure subversion this year. Both will likely end in last, and both will get mediocre material out of Toglia and Butler this year. But they had that Sunday, that moment, to absolutely floor me. And they deserve props for that.

Coming Tonight: I never thought this guy would become such a consistent power hitter, and such a consistent starting infielder, but here we are.

The Butler Did It

 

You think about glittering instances of players joining a team before something about the team changed and it became the era the player is more commonly associated with. Jose Altuve spent 2 seasons in Houston before they went back to orange and joined the AL, so thinking of him as an NL 2nd Baseman is odd. Nick Johnson and Chad Cordero were members of the 2004 Expos before they'd become better known as Washington Nationals. Frank Thomas had a few years in the navy-and-red White Sox uniforms before they famously went back to black in the early 90s. 

I think about the A's rookies that are joining the team now that might be with the team for a while, especially when they move to Las Vegas. Esteury Ruiz, Zach Gelof, and now Lawrence Butler and Joe Boyle, who've joined in the last month. Boyle went three innings strong today without allowing any runs [Ken Waldichuk ruined that], and he's one of those guys that the A's could build on if they want to start something in the next few years. 

And then there's Butler, who was seen as a major prospect in the last couple years. So far in the majors, the main asset that Butler's scouting reports were right on is his outfield play. He's already completed several eye-popping plays in center field, and even if Ruiz is similarly slick out there, Butler makes less errors. Butler's also hit 4 homers and 9 RBIs in 30 games, and he's beginning to get the hang of things. 

The young core that's succeeding in Oakland right now, consisting of Ryan Noda, Zach Gelof, Nick Allen and Esteury Ruiz, is something that could just need a more supportive roster. If all of them are still around in 2025, and if the A's keep bringing up strong prospects like Boyle who don't fold when given the opportunity, we could be looking at them a lot differently. Really, what's weighed this team down has been the amount of pieces from other farm systems that were let go for a reason. Veterans and younger players alike are struggling to flourish in a more open playing space, and once-promising careers like Ken Waldichuk, Aledmys Diaz, Kyle Muller and Tony Kemp are well in jeopardy. 

Then again, what's also likely is that this team could arrive in Vegas and it could still take a while for them to build on anything. These guys could either not be the answer at all or be the answer and still not stick around [thanks to ownership]. As we've seen in the early 2010s, as well as in 2017, all it takes is just some really nice pieces to make a team watchable again, and there are a few of those that intrigue me. It's just never certain if that means the A's will be any good anytime soon.

Coming Tomorrow- Man, I don't know if any of us predicted the amount of goodwill this guy would lose with just one contract.