Athletics’ Vaunted Lineup Has Underwhelmed to Start 2026

All winter long, the discussion surrounding the Athletics had to deal with their pitching. Who will step up in the rotation, how many rookies debut, and which arms will thieve in leverage innings? All were valid questions that we still do not have clear answers to.

Pitching was the primary focus not only because of the lacking talent, but partially because of how strong the A’s lineup has become. Home-grown talent has blossomed in front of our eyes over the past two seasons, and the addition of Jeff McNeil seemed to fit like a glove.

Power bats in Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers, Brent Rooker, and Tyler Soderstrom will be balanced by more contact-oriented players in Jacob Wilson and McNeil. Cross your fingers and hope Max Muncy and Denzel Clarke can at least be serviceable, but with so little ridding on them, the A’s could afford growing pains in two spots.

Well, we are now a couple of weeks into the season, and the team’s offense has been as big of an issue as we predicted the pitching would be. Although there is a ton of time to flip the script, early signs are concerning.

The Stars are Not Shinning

The A’s made headlines by locking up a number of their core players to long-term deals. Rooker inked a five-year extension, while Lawrence Butler, Soderstrom, and Wilson each signed a seven-year extension.

Each of these players had a significant impact over the past two season but have struggled out of the gate. Players the A’s were counting on to carry the middle of the order have fallen flat, and in turn, aided in the team’s slow start.

	Slash	OPS	wRC+
Tyler Soderstrom	.212/.316/.333	.649	88
Brent Rooker	.176/.256/.353	.609	71
Jacob Wilson	.237/.237/.316	.553	51
Lawrence Butler	.200/.231/.360	.591	63

None of the four have an OPS over .650 and they have combined for a total of three home runs. Soderstrom and Rooker were paid to add power to the lineup, but they have come up short through the first two weeks.

Wilson’s value is heavily weighted on his batting average, and so far he’s well below his standard while more than doubling his strikeout rate.

Of course, we can’t talk about the struggles of the A’s lineup without mentioning Nick Kurtz. A true breakout in 2025, Kurtz is seen as one of the premier young hitters in all of baseball. While that is still true, his 2026 season has started with only one extra-base hit — a double.

I do think Kurtz will turn it around soon enough. He is still making hart contact (94.3 mph average exit velocity) but has not found his timing just yet. We have seen his ground-ball rate spike to almost 50%, and he’s not pulling the ball enough to make the most impact.

Kurtz will iron out these issues and get his timing back, especially on fastballs, and start driving the ball once again. I believe the issue will correct itself in a matter of time, but his slow start in the leadoff spot is hurting the A’s.

A similar story can be told about Soderstrom and Rooker, who will always come with some swing-and-miss but power to equalize, but I do have concerns about Wilson and Butler.

Wilson is here to do one thing extremely well: put the ball in play. These types of profiles can have up-and-down years based heavily on batted-ball luck, so raw numbers can lie. However, Wilson is chasing pitches out of the one at an alarming rate.

Via Baseball Savant

The picture above shows how often, by percentage, a pitch lands in each area of the zone. As you can see, pitchers have started throwing breaking balls low and away, often outside of the zone, to Wilson. You see that 14% and 22%, the two spots with the most volume thus far? Wilson has a .125 batting average in those areas.

The scouting report is out. After seeing 62% fastballs last season, Wilson has only seen 51% this year and the amount of breaking balls he has seen has increased by eight percent. All this to say, Wilson is going to have to show the ability to make an adjustment before pitchers live low and away with him.

As for Butler, well, strikeouts are still an issue. He will likely always have more whiff and chase in his game than you would like, but if he is punishing mistake pitches then he can be a valuable player. Last season, we saw a drop in his launch angle and exit velocities, and the same trend is happening this season.

Langeliers, who has more or less carried the offense to start, cannot be the only reliable bat. There’s simply too much talent on this team for the trend to continue. How quickly their top players turn it around is the question.

Jeff McNeil’s Slow Start

The A’s taking advantage of what was essentially a salary dump to acquire McNeil was a pretty savvy move, in my opinion. While I did not envision McNeil taking home a batting title at this point in his career, I did think he was a great fit.

A team with this much youth and inexperience needed a veteran to fill the bottom of the order. McNeil has thrived on making a lot of contact and spraying line drives to find holes in between infielders and outfielders. A simple, old school approach.

So far, nothing is trending in the right direction. His bat speed is down four ticks, and his 84.7 mph average exit velocity is near the bottom of the league. While these metrics tend to drive more for power hitters, the margins become slim for contact hitters as well.

The approach and swing decisions look uncomfortable for McNeil, which has led to him having career-worst whiff rates on all classifications of pitches. I’m not sure if it is him slowly adjusting or not picking up pitches well out of the hand, but every swing looks less confident.

While everything we know about McNeil points to him correcting a 30.8% strikeout rate, the numbers are still the numbers. The A’s needed McNeil to step in while the bigger bats have started cold, and a 35 wRC+ is simply not enough.

Sure, he’ll turn it around. But to what extent? Did the A’s get a useful player who can get back closer to career norms, or is the decline fast approaching? Time will tell, but his start hasn’t been promising.

Final Thoughts

This season was not about being in the playoff mix. You could argue there was a chance if everything goes right, but we already can tell everything isn’t going right. The 2026 season was about core players continuing to establish themselves while the pitching staff figures out who is a long-term fixture.

There’s plenty of ball left and time to correct issues, and maybe the two recent offensive performances are the start of a turnaround, but the start has not been what many had hoped for.

Stats were taken prior to play on April 7.