The A’s Young Core Is Picking Up Right Where it Left Off
Last year, the A's core of young players stood out in the second half. To open the 2025 season, they're still stealing the show.
You are forgiven if the Athletics‘ 6-9 record to start the 2025 season doesn’t quite knock your socks off. This is a team that’s not expected to go very far this year, but incremental improvements over the past few seasons would be considered a win it itself.
The goal should be simple: win more than the 69 games they won in 2024.
Those A’s were surprisingly competent in the second half, and they’re looking to build off of some of that momentum in the current campaign. Most of the roster is taken up by players who simply weren’t good enough to stick around on other teams’ 26-man units, but there’s a promising young core in place over in Sacramento.
We touched on this core late last year and how important they are going to be as the organization looks to make it through a multi-year rebuild. To open up the new year, they are continuing to rake and the early returns are looking promising.
The A’s Young Core Is Doing What They Do Best
Look, most of the players worth getting excited about on this team are on the position player side. Super-reliever Mason Miller is the best young pitcher on the squad, with crafty veterans like Luis Severino and Jeffrey Springs leading the starting rotation. Otherwise, it’s bats, bats, and more bats.
Through their first 14 games, the lineup has looked … just fine! They’re currently in the top 10 in all of baseball in home runs (20, 5th), K% (19.0, 4th), wRC+ (114, 8th), and ISO (.166, 9th). For a team projected by PECOTA to only win 72 games this year, things are going pretty smoothly.
Of course, this is not likely to continue, but don’t forget that many people were saying the exact same thing about the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers around this time last year. They both wound up making the postseason.
Lawrence Butler
Butler burst onto the scene in a big way last year, posting 3.0 bWAR through 125 games while hitting 22 home runs and driving in 57. He went 18-for-18 in stolen base attempts, posted an .807 OPS and promptly earned a long-term extension in the process.
Now that he’s locked up through 2031 (with a team option for 2032), the 24-year-old is penciled in as one of the A’s cornerstones for many years to come. It was a bold move for them to lock him up so quickly into his career, but so far he’s proven to them that this is going to be money well spent.
Through 15 games, Butler’s got four extra-base hits with three RBI, a pair of stolen bases and a .724 OPS. His OPS+ is coming in at 116 – putting him at 16% above league-average – and he’s also shown a surprisingly strong sense of patience at the plate. So far, he’s struck out 10 times in 53 at-bats, but he’s also drawn just as many walks.
Residing in the 77th percentile in K% and 89th in BB%, Butler’s clearly doing a great job sizing up pitches and making the right decisions in whether or not he should swing. The leadoff hitter plays the game in a fun and loose way and he’s going to be a crucial cog in this lineup for a long time because of it.
Shea Langeliers
It took quite some time for Langeliers to find his footing at the game’s highest level, but once he arrived, he really arrived. Last year was the first time in his career that he’d been worth more than 1.0 bWAR (2.9) and he hit the second-most home runs amongst all catchers in the game. His .226 ISO also led the way, topping Cal Raleigh by 10 points.
Because of what he showed us last year, Langeliers has started to turn some heads and earn some national attention. Last year, he was amongst the league leaders in Pop Time, but he’s adding a 91st percentile in Framing to his game this year as well. Pair this with some light-tower power and pitch-recognition that matches his teammate Butler’s, you’ve got yourself a solid backstop.
Langeliers has made it into 13 contests this year, hitting three home runs with eight RBI and as many runs scored. His OPS is also up over .800 while his 139 OPS+ is 29 points higher than it was last year when he established himself as an offensive standout. Oh, and he’s also walked eight times while striking out just seven times.
At the moment, Langeliers doesn’t top the league-wide catcher leaderboards in any offensive categories. However, he’s hanging around the top-four in the vast majority of them, which is more than acceptable to this A’s team who just needs to find diamonds in the rough wherever they can.
Tyler Soderstrom
One of the biggest surprises in baseball this year is Soderstrom and the scorching-hot start he’s gotten off to at the dish. He’s a former first-round pick (2020) and top prospect that received 106 games in the big leagues with very uninspiring results to this point, but now he’s turning a corner in a big way.
After posting a combined -0.6 bWAR over the past two years, Soderstrom currently sits at 1.0 through just 15 games. He leads the majors with six home runs while driving in 11 runs, scoring 12 of his own, hitting .321 with a .679 SLG (seventh in MLB) and 1.075 OPS (10th in MLB).
Soderstrom had shown small glimpses of hope last year, but he’s branching off of this momentum in a big way. His Average Exit Velocity has raised from 91.9 to 92.6 while he’s also seen improvements across the board in multiple metrics including his Barrel % (3.6 increase) and Hard-Hit % (1.1 increase).
Even last year, he had started to trend in the right direction. Like our Clay Snowden pointed out, when you put these two years together you’re looking at a legitimate power threat.
Jacob Wilson
Another former first-round pick of the A’s, Wilson got a brief look in the big leagues last year, but his 28-game showing wasn’t quite enough to show what he’s capable of. Through 15 games in 2025, he’s leading the AL with 21 hits and has a smooth .912 OPS.
Wilson is Arraez-esque in that he never strikes out or walks (he has two punchouts and zero walks through 57 at-bats this year), but he rarely swings at bad pitches and makes a ton of contact when he does swing. There’s also basically no power to speak of, but he’s a high-average, high on-base player who has a 1.052 career OPS in the minor leagues.
The shortstop only just turned 23 years old, so he’s going to be around for a while, too. His presence in the A’s lineup only makes the team more well-rounded, as he offsets the power bats with a bit of small-ball that, frankly, MLB could use more of nowadays.
More Help Is on the Way
To help matters even more is the fact that uber-prospect Nick Kurtz is quite literally beating down the door for his first big-league promotion. Last year’s first-round pick is annihilating Triple-A pitching through his first 13 games. He’s hit seven home runs and has a 1.276 OPS so far, both of which would lead the majors right now if he were up in The Show.
Kurtz is a very mature player for one that’s only just 25 games into his professional career. He’s got immense power but also a knack for hitting in the clutch and coming through in big moments. The 23-year-old could not possibly be any closer to his first promotion to the big leagues.
Of course, the only problem is that he’s not going to have anywhere to play. Like Soderstrom, Kurtz is a lefty-swinging 1B-DH type and he can’t play any other positions. Brent Rooker is locked up as the A’s DH and doesn’t quite have the defensive prowess to move back to an outfield corner.
This gives the A’s quite the logjam, but for a rebuilding team it’s a great problem to have. It’s no coincidence that Mark Kotsay just gave Rooker a start in right field on Saturday night after 131 of his 144 starts last year came as the A’s DH. This team is itching to give Kurtz a pathway to consistent at-bats, so perhaps they’re willing to sacrifice some defense in the name of getting another big bat into the lineup.
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Eric Treuden (troy-din) has covered baseball for years for multiple different outlets including FanSided, Yardbarker, and Wisconsin Sports Heroics. He recently was the editor for Jays…