The Jays head into Sacramento at the top of the division, looking to go into the All-Star break strong by facing off a team that kicked the Jays into their winning ways at the end of May. On May 29th, the A’s came into Toronto for a four game series that the Jays swept, starting with a 12-0 drubbing and since then, have gone 25-10 to unseat the Yankees at the top of the division standings. The A’s will also be the final team the Jays face before the break, making for the potential of a nice bookend if they can continue their winning ways against them.
I reached out to Nico Pemantle, one of the managers at Athletics Nation, and he was kind enough to answer some questions about his A’s.
The Athletics have put together a really exciting core of young position players with Kurtz, Soderstrom, Wilson, Butler and Geloff all 25 or under and anchored by relatively young veterans in Rooker and Langeliers. What is going to be the key to building around them to take Athletics back into winning seasons?
As you can see, what the core of young players have in common is that they don’t pitch. The A’s two biggest problems are that they hit terribly with RISP and they have given up 10+ runs in over 20% of their games. So while the core of position players is exciting (and I would put Denzel Clarke in there), it’s Jack Perkins, Luis Morales, and Gage Jump, 3 excellent pitching prospects now in the big leagues, AAA, and AA respectively, that will determine whether the A’s “have talent” or “are actually good”.
On May 13, 2025, the Athletics were second in the division with a 22-20 record after clobbering the Dodgers. On June 4th they lost to the Twins to put their record at 23-40, having gone 1-20 over those three weeks. What happened to make that stretch take place or was it just a sequence of bad luck?
I’ve been an A’s fan since 1980 and I don’t think I can recall a stretch more confounding or bewildering than that 1-20 debacle. It was like they kept playing the same two games over and over and over. Either they were blown out something fierce or they took a lead into the late innings and a different reliever blew it. And often it was a reliever who had been lights out all season to that point. I don’t much believe in curses or the correlation between whether a black cat walks under a ladder and how your baseball team performs, but it was like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Note that not only did they play slightly over .500 ball up to that point, they have played about .500 ball since.
With so much conflicting information, how confident are Athletics fans that the team will be out of Sacramento and into a new ballpark in Las Vegas by opening day 2028?
I have said all along I think the Las Vegas project will fail. They are trying to squeeze a stadium onto a 9 acre parcel, they are promising to pay for it by selling out every home game for 10 years, and they are about $1B short because investors look at the project and pass. John Fisher claims he has the money and will pay for it himself if need be, but it’s hard to imagine he’s really going to put a huge chunk of his personal wealth into a project no one else wants to touch when he doesn’t even care about baseball.
My personal prediction is that if they do build a stadium and bring the A’s there, they will draw about 20,000 fans/game. But with rising construction costs and tariffs only hiking prices by the day, I don’t think they can build it for less than $2.5B (they budgeted $1.5B and then recently upped it to $1.75B) and unless there is a sale or some sucker finally steps forward to invest in it, I say it never happens.
Which prospect are Athletics fans most excited for that might debut this year?
That’s a hard question because most of the exciting prospects for 2025 have already debuted and the rest are not yet on the immediate cusp. Denzel Clarke is someone I long anticipated because his defense is so electric and his ceiling is high. Now he’s up, as is Colby Thomas and Jack Perkins. As far as who could break camp with the club in 2026, probably the most exciting prospect would be LHP Gage Jump who has risen fast through the system and is pitching well at AA. The A’s chance of competing for the post-season in 2026 runs through Jump and Morales (and Perkins) giving the A’s legitimacy at the front of the rotation.
Who is your favourite member of the team to watch right now?
It has to be the wild Denzelope, observed in his natural habitat (CF). Watching him play center field is sometimes flat out jaw dropping. He has generally struggled at the plate but he hit a 471 foot HR on Saturday.
Finally, just a fun little exercise, if you could choose any player who debuted with the Athletics at any point in their history (and that’s a lot of history) and drop them into this team at their rookie position and with their rookie year numbers, who would it be?
I guess I wouldn’t object to plopping 1980 Rickey Henderson in LF to bat .303 with a .420 OBP and 100 stolen bases.
Thanks Nico!