Breaking Down A's System Opening Day Roster Decisions

Well, here we are for Year 3 of Excessive Prospect Analysis, albeit in a somewhat different setup than the prior two seasons of A’s system coverage. I’m not doing podcasting this year and will be focusing on writing, as I’m hopeful that will enable me to cover things more efficiently.

I’m playing catch-up a bit in getting my coverage of the season going–though I’ve been watching and charting A’s system games since the minor league season got fully underway last week–so I think perhaps a good place to begin with the 2024 season is to look a bit at the decisions the A’s organization made in assigning their minor leaguers to their full-season affiliates last week.

I want to emphasize that my focus–to the extent that the below is focused–is on decisions. I’m not trying to preview the rosters of each of the four affiliates, per se. Going into the season, we knew it was, for instance, quite likely that Brett Harris would be in Las Vegas, Daniel Susac would be in Midland, Henry Bolte would be in Lansing, and Myles Naylor would be in Stockton…and indeed, that’s where the A’s put them. As important and interesting as those players are, there’s nothing notable about their assignments, so they’re not going to factor in much to the discussion in this piece.

Roughly speaking, in talking about the Opening Day roster decisions at each of the organization’s four minor league affiliates, I want to get at what I found interesting, what I found surprising, and what interesting roster dynamics seem to be present that will be worth following as the 2024 season proceeds.

There is, as always, a lot to say. Let’s get into it.

AAA Las Vegas

Triple-A is the minor league level with the least turnover and the most certainty, so there’s by far the least need to get into a lot of details with this roster.

The A’s don’t usually have a lot of surprises when it comes to assigning players to the Aviators, in that it’s rare they skip players over Midland or move them from Midland to Las Vegas without the benefit of at least a couple of months in the Texas League. However, Tyler Soderstrom was a notable exception to that rule last season–it worked out okay, but not great (.526 SLG but only an 88 wRC+)–and the organization has made a second exception this year in sending Max Muncy to the PCL after just 51 Double-A games. As it was with Soderstrom, had Muncy gone to college, this would be his draft year, yet here he is on the doorstep of the majors. In the early going, Muncy is certainly affirming the organization’s aggressiveness, starting 10-for-29 with more extra-base hits (5) than strikeouts (4). He’s come a long way from his rough first two months of 2023 and has clearly positioned himself as one of the organization’s top prospects.

Other than that, there really isn’t much to say about the Vegas roster decisions other than noting that nobody on the AAA roster bubble was released in the spring and that some guys with 2023 MLB experience (Joey Estes, Hogan Harris, and Soderstrom, primarily) were optioned down to Vegas pretty early in the spring.

AA Midland

This roster begins a theme we’re going to see a fair bit as we progress: all told, this is a pretty conservative group of assignments. There are perhaps three exceptions that come off as notably aggressive. The first, and biggest, is the organization’s decision to move sixth-overall pick Jacob Wilson straight to Midland for his first full season after a strong showing in Lansing down the stretch in his pro debut. The twitchy shortstop has been installed as the RockHounds leadoff man, and though he’s expanded the zone a fair bit in the early going, he’s still making a ton of in-zone contact and playing strong defense. There’s precedent for the A’s making this particular move and having it work very well, as they did it with Zack Gelof in 2022. Like it seems to be with Wilson, the last thing Gelof needed to adjust to lock in in the Texas League was his strike zone judgment, which took a couple of months; we’ll have to see how Wilson fares in that department as the season progresses. 

The other two notable promotions to the RockHounds are those of pitchers Gunnar Hoglund and Pedro Santos. I suppose it’s not technically a promotion for Hoglund, since he did make one start for Midland at the end of 2023, but given that he’d only started 3 High-A games after a rough stretch in Stockton for most of the season, it still qualifies as a notable move for the A’s to bring the former first-rounder (and prize of the Matt Chapman deal) up to the RockHounds roster at this juncture. I think it’s justified, though, and I’m not just saying that because Hoglund threw 4 ⅔ shutout innings in his first 2024 outing. Hoglund’s swinging strike rate and other metrics really outpaced his ERA and strikeout numbers in Stockton, such that I was significantly more encouraged by his overall performance there than his basic statline would have you believe. Mind you, I didn’t expect quite the dominance he suddenly found in those three High-A outings, but that dominance further reinforces that Hoglund is a polished pitcher with three legitimate offerings and good command. He still wasn’t throwing hard at the end of the season, though–just 89-91 mph with the occasional 92–so he’s going to have his work cut out for him to impress in Midland. I don’t have velocity information on him from this season yet, but he’s exaggerated the hip turn in his delivery relative to its 2023 look, presumably to get more deception in there. So far, so good.

As for Santos, the flamethrowing Cuban arrives in Midland with just 21 High-A innings of his own, and they were the typical mixed bag he’s had in his pro career: lots of strikeouts, but lots of walks. He’s already touched 98 mph this year, his curve has morphed into an absolute hammer the last two seasons, and the addition of a hard cutter early last year has allowed Santos to round out his arsenal more effectively and have an offspeed pitch he can challenge hitters with in the strike zone. It’s late-inning stuff, for sure, and Santos has outings where he gets his mechanics dialed in and dominates. He’s definitely made progress on the command front from where he was pre-TJ in 2021, but the Midland assignment definitely is going to be a stress test for his outing-to-outing consistency. Thus far, he looked great in his first relief appearance and was yanking everything down and/or gloveside in his second, a consequence of opening his front shoulder too early in his very rotational delivery.

On the flip side of this trio of relatively aggressive assignments, there are a bunch of quite conservative ones, and this is where I have a bit of an issue with the organization’s minor league roster construction overall. As it was last year, and it often is in the Oakland organization, a large chunk of this roster–particularly on the mound–is basically a Triple-A roster. Worse yet, most of that Vegas-ready group consists of players who really need to be in the PCL for the A’s organization–and their potential trade partners!–to get a useful assessment of their prospect viability.

Now, on the offensive side, this is mostly just two players this season: Denzel Clarke (130 wRC+ last year with Midland) and Cooper Bowman (111). I don’t have too much of an issue with those particular assignments: both guys missed part of last year with injuries, and Las Vegas Ballpark is such a hitter’s paradise that one could argue that Midland is actually the more rigorous offensive learning environment despite its inferior level. Besides, neither player has come out of the gate on fire, so perhaps this is a reaction to spring training struggles. Both guys are only in their age-24 seasons, anyway, so they definitely have plenty of time to impress and spend the bulk of the season in the PCL. It’s not like Clarke in particular isn’t a high-priority guy.

It’s on the mound where this is more troubling to me. Austin Briggs is now 28 years old and has been a relatively effective member of the Hounds’ bullpen since the middle of 2021. He’s a mid-90s sinkerballer who has the right sort of arsenal to actually hang in in Vegas, but he’s never gotten a call there. Chase Cohen and Shohei Tomioka both ended 2023 in Vegas after strong showings in Midland; they’re 27 and 28, respectively, and both have real stuff, but they’re back in the Texas League. Jack Cushing looked like a totally different pitcher down the stretch after being moved to relief in Midland, blowing batters away with his newfound high-fastball approach, but he wasn’t elevated a level either. David Leal is on Year 3 with Midland despite being relatively effective the last two years–granted, he’s now converted to sidearming, so maybe they’re waiting to see how he takes to that. On the rotation side, Royber Salinas, J.T. Ginn, and Ryan Cusick are all repeating the level, the latter two for the second time. Brady Basso didn’t get the push to Vegas, either, even after being added to the 40-man roster at age 26.

I’m not saying all of the pitchers mentioned in the previous paragraph should be in Vegas. Depth is good! You’re way more likely to have an injury stack on the mound than in the field! (Aviators arms have unfortunately already begun to land on the IL this week). There are absolutely holes you can poke in the Midland and/or Vegas resumes of all of these guys! And it’s not as though the Aviators pitching staff has a bunch of guys who’ve been rushed up to that level instead. It’s more that the A’s organization prioritizes bolstering the Vegas group in minor league free agency despite the preexisting depth they have on hand, when really where the organization has struggled in recent years has been at the lower levels. In my opinion, they’d be much better served concentrating more (not all, of course, just more) of their minor league free agency efforts on younger guys–Latin American players who hit free agency at age 23-24, or high-upside players who get released by other organizations early. Note that the A’s elected to pass in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 Draft this year despite drafting first overall. The Marlins and Phillies took five players each, by comparison, and eleven organizations took at least three. The A’s lost three. Last year, the A’s did use at least their first pick in the minor league Rule 5, and they got Joelvis Del Rosario, who boosted the Lansing pitching staff and got onto MLB Pipeline’s A’s Top 30 Prospects (albeit not my own list). I’d rather the organization get more Del Rosarios and Mac Lardners and John Bellers and Serafino Britos* than more Jack O’Loughlins or Danis Correas. Both types of players can be helpful to an organization, but given that the A’s own development efforts tend to focus on college draftees and older international signees to begin with,** further focusing free agency on Vegas-ready talent creates this weird glut at the higher levels while the lower-level squads are spread thinner.

*None of the last 3 are still in the A’s organization, as they all hit free agency last offseason and were not re-signed, but all 3 made meaningful contributions to their A-ball pitching staffs while they were around.

**Another factor here is who the A’s target in trades for prospects: usually guys who would fit in Midland or Vegas, not the lower levels. There haven’t been too many trades since the big unloading in 2022, but still, the remnants of those trades heavily bolster the upper minors at the expense of the lower ones.

In any case, time is of the essence for these pitchers, though unsurprisingly, Midland pitching has thus been stellar in the early going. It’ll be interesting to see how the pitching backlog works out as the year progresses–the first domino to fall was Tyler Baum getting promoted from Midland to Las Vegas yesterday after striking out six of the first eight batters he faced this season. Even though Baum–with his 19 career Double-A innings–isn’t on that list of blocked pitchers, I think that’s a sensible move: he looked dominant in his two outings and is already 26 (and Rule 5 eligible) himself. What a story that guy has been!

High-A Lansing

As much as one can say that a significant portion of the Midland roster could easily be Aviators, the same doesn’t really apply in Lansing. There are certainly a few guys repeating the level who could’ve been moved up: Jacob Watters and Mitch Myers in the team’s rotation, Jack Owen in the bullpen, and Danny Bautista, Jr. and Joshwan Wright on the position player side. But Watters and Myers were very inconsistent last year, Owen sits 84-86 mph with his fastball and wasn’t dominant in 2023, and Bautista and Wright didn’t do much beyond hit for average.

In fact, it’s interesting that the surprisingly conservative assignments on this roster are on the position player side. The biggest is certainly Jonny Butler, who had a huge June in Lansing and hit .288/.380/.475 in Midland after a midseason promotion, albeit in just 23 games around injury trouble. Joining him in the outfield group is Cameron Masterman, who also held his own in Midland down the stretch in 2023, although Masterman was sent up there on more of an emergency basis and had skipped Lansing entirely. It also registers as something of a surprise to see Euribiel Ángeles in Lansing for a third consecutive year after he got a late-season look in Midland in 2023 himself and had hit .312 in Lansing from July 1 on. Ángeles’ performance has been uneven enough in his time in the A’s system that the repeat is still understandable–and he still hasn’t turned 22 yet, too–but it nonetheless is rare to see someone of his (past) prospect status left at one level for so long with even his intermittent level of success. Seeing this trio being surpassed by Caeden Trenkle (who hit worse than fellow outfielders Butler and Masterman in Midland), Jack Winkler (who hit worse than they did in Lansing) and the upper-minors-untested quartet of Junior Pérez, Brennan Milone, Colby Thomas, and Jacob Wilson is interesting. Mind you, I don’t have any real quibbles with that set of decisions–they’re not exactly what I would’ve predicted, but they’re absolutely defensible, and it’s both a small enough group of players and guys who have enough years left prior to free agency that it doesn’t really impact the organization’s ability to fairly evaluate everybody involved as the year progresses.

This is the one A’s farm club that actually has a reasonably-sized contingent of players who register as, if not surprises in advancing to this particular level, at least intriguing assignments. This is particularly true on the mound, where starters Eduardo Rivéra, Wander Guante, and Luis Carrasco and reliever Yehizon Sanchez are advancing to the Midwest League after uneven seasons in Stockton in 2023; Sanchez was even demoted to the ACL for several weeks in the summer after racking up an ERA of 15.53 (!) in Stockton. Rivera, just 20, was promising but erratic in his first full season last year. Guante has a nice three-pitch arsenal but was inconsistent start-to-start, and Carrasco is more polished from a command perspective but has struggled to find good offspeed pitches to complement his heavily-used 91-94 mph sinker. As for Sanchez, he remains an electric sinker-slider arm at his best–he’s been up to 98 mph in the past–but struggled from about the most acute case of homeritis from a nominal groundball pitcher you can imagine over the past couple of years in Stockton.

Of course, that last bit is key–in Stockton. Much as one could plausibly argue Midland is actually a tougher test for the likes of Denzel Clarke and Cooper Bowman than Las Vegas would be, it’s possible that Jackson Field in Lansing, hitter-friendly though it may be relative to much of the Midwest League, is actually less ominous (or at least not much more so) for a pitcher than being at the level below it. That sure seemed to be how it worked for Hoglund last year, and Sanchez himself got a late-season look with the Lugnuts and cut his ERA almost in half!...to 8.10. It’ll be interesting to see how this group progresses given the slightly more aggressive tenor of their assignments, but it’s nice to see them moving through the system. Rivéra’s progress will be particularly notable to watch.

One other quick note I wanted to make about the Lugnuts rotation concerns Blaze Pontes, the team’s 16th-round selection in 2022. It’s not at all surprising that Pontes is a Lugnut–he was one of Stockton’s best pitchers last season–but it is somewhat surprising that he’s a starter, a role he hasn’t had as a pro before and didn’t even have consistently in college. I’m all for it, though, because Pontes has the sort of profile that, as of now anyway, makes sense in the role: three distinct pitches, solid command, but not a single overwhelming offering.

There are also a few notably aggressive assignments within the Lugnuts position player group. One, catcher Jose Mujíca, is advancing after a meager 60 wRC+ in Stockton last year, although I actually like the move: Mujíca had strong contact and plate discipline numbers last year and has flashed some power. I think he can beat the .241 BABIP that really deflated his statline, though the 22-year-old still has a lot of work to do defensively. Perhaps more surprising to me was Dereck Salom, who slugged just .267 last year in Stockton and has one career home run, though it looks like he’s going to slot into a utility infield role. But probably the most interesting dynamic within the Lugnuts’ position player decisions deals with the 2023 draft class, where only 15th-round first baseman Will Simpson and 17th-round middle infielder Colby Halter made the team. They’re in key roles, too, with Simpson already establishing himself as Lansing’s cleanup hitter and Halter leading off. Simpson is less of a surprise than Halter is–he crushed Low-A pitching after signing and was noticed enough that he’s already checking in as an organizational top 30 prospect on MLB Pipeline’s list–but the two are the lowest-drafted A’s players to start their first full seasons in Lansing since the draft went to 20 rounds.

Low-A Stockton

In some ways, this roster is more straightforward to evaluate than Midland or Lansing. Nobody on the Ports’ roster has had more than a brief fill-in stint at higher levels, so there are really no demotions to speak of, and the roster is understandably comprised largely of members of the A’s 2023 draft class. Other than Wilson, Simpson, Halter, the since-traded Jonah Cox, and high school pitchers Steven Echavarria (Extended Spring) and Cole Miller (TJ surgery), everyone the A’s signed out of the 2023 draft is with the Ports, plus undrafted free agents Nick Schwartz and Casey Yamauchi.

It’s worth noting, though, that having only Wilson, Simpson, and Halter escape to higher levels is a fairly conservative play by the A’s as well, relative to previous years. Last season, for instance, the organization sent four 2022 draftees to Lansing to open the year: Daniel Susac, Jacob Watters, Jack Perkins, and Caeden Trenkle. In 2022, Zack Gelof was sent to Midland and five others (Grant Holman, Brett Harris, Drew Swift, Jack Winkler, and Jonny Butler) were sent to Lansing, where Mason Miller would have started as well if healthy. This year, not a single draftee pitcher has been assigned to the Lugnuts, and only Simpson and Halter made the High-A roster on the position player side. Some of that is the A’s taking three high school players in the top 5 rounds, trading their 6th-rounder in his first pro offseason, and focusing a bit more on younger college players, but it’s still a notable exercise of caution, particularly with second-round outfielder Ryan Lasko and fifth-round righthander Nathan Dettmer. Simpson and Halter leapfrogging other college bats like catcher Cole Conn and infielder Luke Mann is also interesting. 

Relative to the other conservative assignments at higher levels, though, I don’t really think it’s a big deal that these higher-profile college draftees are starting at Stockton and not Lansing. The 2023 draftees, as a whole, got significantly less pro experience in their first pro summers than the 2021 and 2022 A’s classes did,* and thus none of these Ports college draftees had more than a few token games at the Rookie level last year; none even made it to full-season ball except for NDFAs Schwartz and Yamauchi. Early-round A’s college draftees have started at Stockton and moved quickly from there before: see Colby Thomas last year or Denzel Clarke the year before. It’s just interesting to see the lack of quick movers in this particular class, and especially that the only two quick movers beyond Wilson were such late-round guys.

*Which, frankly, was weird last summer, too. It’s one thing for just-drafted pitchers to not pitch much, but even Lasko never got to leave Arizona. In 2021 and 2022, the organization’s healthy collegiate position player draftees all got quite a bit of playing time in full-season ball after signing. Last year was different, though, and most of the guys never got out of the complex. The three players who got extended time in full-season ball? Wilson, Simpson, and Halter. One wonders if that has a lot to do with their Opening Day assignments, if there was some factor that made the A’s particularly aggressive with them both last summer and now, or what.

One thing that the assignment of Lasko, Dettmer, and the other single-digit-round draftees to Stockton does is it gives the Ports a bit more of a prospect-laden Opening Day roster than they often have. Dettmer, Jackson Finley, Tom Reisinger III, and Drew Conover bring some prospect oomph to a rotation that also includes the talented Taiwanese duo of Chen Zhong-Ao Zhuang and Tzu-Chen Sha, who both have some solid Stockton experience under their belts, and Corey Avant and Ryan Brown slot in with flamethrowing returners Yunior Tur and Franck De La Rosa to make for a more power-armed bullpen than the Ports typically break camp with. Lasko and Myles Naylor give the team two second-round picks on the position player side along with an interesting switch-hitting catcher in Conn (who has impressed both at the plate and behind it in his first few Ports games), a proven college slugger in Mann, and intriguing seventh-rounder Nate Nankil. Returners Pedro Pinéda and Carlos Franco will look to build on solid finishes to their 2023 campaigns.

However, a side effect of the higher number of draftees staying in Stockton is a low number of ACL A’s 2023 players advancing to full-season ball, despite several of them putting up strong performances at the Rookie level. In fact, infielders Ángel Arévalo and Yeniel Laboy and reliever Franyelson Rodríguez spent over a month each in Stockton to end 2023,* but none broke camp with an affiliate to open 2024. Nor did outfielder Joseph Rodríguez, who hit .281/.439/.421 in the ACL last season, catcher Mario Gomez (.272/.405/.480), relievers Dairon De Jesús (36 K in 23 ⅓ ACL innings) or Brayan Restituyo (35 K in 29 ACL innings), or other promising 2023 ACL A’s like catcher Ángel Rivéra, infielder Germán Ortíz, or pitchers Jefferson Jean, Camilo Hernández, or Jesús Silvério. Some of these guys might be hurt–I would guess Jean is, but I don’t know**–but presumably most of them are healthy and just didn’t make the team.

*It is worth noting here that only Rodríguez experienced any success among this trio, and he’s an older reliever who throws a ton of changeups and tops out at 88 mph.

**Only because he didn’t pitch after making his first two starts in Arizona last year, which obviously makes one fear an arm surgery was involved.

The situation with these players is, in its own way, quite similar to that of the glut of experienced, proven Midland relievers. It’s not as though there are a ton of obvious guys on the Stockton roster you or I would send back to Extended Spring to open a spot for a Rodríguez or a De Jesús. Robert Puason? Maybe, though it’s not like he hasn’t played pretty well in the ACL himself. Dárlyn Montéro? Maybe, though hey, he’s off to a good start, and he’s had moments in the ACL too. 

On the positive side, I think this is, to some extent, a symptom of the A’s having significantly more overall organizational depth* than they did, say, two years ago. Even better, it reflects the fact that there aren’t a ton of injuries in the system right now, particularly with relievers and position players. On the other hand, this also filters down from all those upper-minors free agent signings, which seem to be pushing the organization to an overall quite conservative approach to Opening Day roster assignments this year. The interesting thing is that that pattern of signings is longstanding in the A’s organization, but the effect of it filtering down all the way to blocking draftees from starting in Lansing or ACL A’s players from making it up to Stockton on Opening Day is new.

*This isn’t to say the minor league system is necessarily in much better shape than it was right after the infamous March 2022 trades. I do think the 125th best player in the system now is probably better than the 125th best player in the system then, though, and that’s what counts with regard to this particular point. The top end of the system, which is a much bigger driver of organizational rankings and the like, is a separate question with, in all likelihood, a worse answer.

As with all those Midland relievers, we’re of course not talking about premium prospects when it comes to guys like Rodríguez, Gomez, De Jesús, Restituyo, etc., and I’m not arguing all of those players, even if healthy, deserved to just be handed roster spots with the Ports. But as international players, they’re already a few years into their pro careers, and their service time clocks are ticking more urgently than those of the recent draftees are, so if they have any upside at all–and I’ll save my thoughts on whether they do for another time–it behooves the A’s to see if they can capitalize on full-season opportunities and gain some momentum sooner rather than later.

Again, injuries will no doubt create opportunities for some of these players sooner rather than later. Last season, I was frustrated that Luis Carrasco didn’t make the Ports Opening Day roster, but he ended up finishing third on the team in innings and earning a promotion to Lansing this year. It’s certainly better to be able to call on players with strong performance histories as injuries mount than to have to reach for rawer talent and rush things, and in my opinion, the jump from the complex to Low-A is the toughest jump in minor league baseball. But a stat I’ve mentioned many times over the past several years is the low number of A’s-signed international players on the Midland, Las Vegas, and Oakland rosters combined,* and that number isn’t going to improve significantly if guys like Rodríguez and De Jesús can dominate at the Rookie level and still find themselves without advancement opportunities. There’s a long list of guys from A’s systems past who simply ran out of service time before they really got going, despite relatively strong performance in the opportunities they got: Jhenderson Hurtado, Robert Mullen, Jose Mora, and Oscar Tovar are four fairly recent names who come to mind.**

*This year, it’s 3: Lazaro Armenteros, Jordan Díaz, and Pedro Santos, which is pretty low even by A’s standards. A full 10 are in Lansing, however, which is way up from the past, so we’ll see how that evolves.

**You might be thinking “Well, if they were that good, surely the A’s (or at the very least someone else!) would sign these guys once they hit free agency.” Sure, sort of. The thing is–and this is, admittedly, part of the reason the A’s themselves don’t sign more low-minors free agents, I’m sure–unless a particular player is really a strong (like, org top 40ish) prospect, if he slots in to, say, your High-A roster, it’s not easy to see the endgame in signing him. You get him for a year, maybe develop him into a good Double-A player (but probably not a guy you’re putting on the 40-man yet), then lose him to minor league free agency again and see another organization get to bring him in when he’s finally nearing MLB readiness. It’s a tough road, and I wish there was a better way to handle this situation systematically, because guys like Tovar (sat 95 mph with sink in his final A’s org season in 2021) and Hurtado (sat 92 with a plus slider and deception from the left side) were clearly better than a lot of similarly-aged drafted players when they hit minor league free agency, but neither had much experience above Low-A and were just a bit too flawed (think org top 65 but not top 40) to move the needle to get their careers to continue within those constraints. Many of the 2023 ACL A’s named above project to possibly be in that sort of prospect tier down the line, which makes getting them to Double-A by the time they hit free agency very important, because then they become much more viable to invest in on the minor league free agent market.

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Overall, my takeaway from looking through the roster is, again, that there’s an increased amount of provenness and depth among A’s farmhands in 2024 relative to the past couple of years, which definitely put the organization in a challenging spot in deciding who to advance and who to, in an unusually large number of cases, demote from the level they ended 2023 at. 

The elevated number of players whose assignments come off as surprisingly conservative also casts an interesting light on the few more aggressive moves the A’s made here. The most consequential are Wilson and Muncy, but even the assignments of players like Santos, Rivéra, Simpson, and Halter stand out given how everything else stacked up.

As always, it’ll be fascinating to see which moves prove prescient by the organization, which seem to backfire, and how these initial assignments set up how everyone progresses through the A’s system as the 2024 season evolves.