The Athletics announced their seven-year, $86MM extension with left fielder Tyler Soderstrom from their future home site in Las Vegas. That franchise-record deal followed last winter’s significant investments in DH Brent Rooker and outfielder Lawrence Butler.
Katie Woo and Will Sammon of The Athletic wrote this week that the A’s were interested in exploring extension talks with other players. General manager David Forst confirmed as much at yesterday’s presser, revealing without specifics that the team has opened some discussions.
“The idea of taking this group of young players and locking them up into a new ballpark has been something we’ve talked about for a long time,” Forst said (link via Mark Anderson of The Associated Press). “We were able to get Brent Rooker and Lawrence Butler signed last year, Tyler now, and there are ongoing conversations with others. So this is kind of the blueprint for how we want to do this and how we want to open the ballpark in ’28.”
While Forst didn’t identify which players the A’s were trying to extend, there are a few obvious targets. Shea Langeliers has three seasons of arbitration eligibility. Respective Rookie of the Year winner and runner-up Nick Kurtz and Jacob Wilson have five years of club control. Langeliers is one of the best offensive catchers in MLB. Kurtz and Wilson look like franchise cornerstones at first base and shortstop, respectively.
MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects Langeliers for a $5.1MM salary. His power production should pay well in the arbitration process, and he’d make between $20-25MM over the next three years if he continues at his recent pace. Langeliers is controlled through his age-30 season. Sean Murphy (six years, $73MM) and Cal Raleigh (five years, $99.4MM) have signed recent extensions in the same service bracket.
Langeliers wouldn’t match Raleigh even though that deal was signed before the Seattle backstop’s record-setting 2025 season. His camp could look to beat the Murphy contract, though. The former Athletic was a superior defender but didn’t match Langeliers’ power ceiling. Murphy was accordingly starting from a lower projected base in arbitration than Langeliers will be.
Extending Wilson and certainly making a run at Kurtz would require new franchise records. Wilson is well beyond the $65MM range for which Ezequiel Tovar and Butler signed with one-plus service year. He doesn’t have the same power potential that Jackson Merrill and Roman Anthony showed to command early-career deals of at least $130MM. That said, he’s an up-the-middle defender with elite contact ability who was 21 percentage points better than a league average hitter in his first full season. He’s arguably closer to Merrill/Anthony than he is to Soderstrom, and a nine-figure asking price wouldn’t be outlandish.
Kurtz would be the most difficult of the group to lock up. On a rate basis, only Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani were better hitters this year. Kurtz has already banked a $7MM signing bonus out of the draft and collected nearly $1.3MM from the pre-arbitration bonus pool. He’s also a client of Excel Sports Management, an agency which has almost no history of signing pre-arbitration extensions. It’d likely require the A’s to offer more than double the Soderstrom contract just to get talks underway if they want to buy out multiple free agent years.
The A’s extension candidates beyond that trio would all be much cheaper but completely speculative fliers. Defensive stalwart center fielder Denzel Clarke and young starter Luis Morales showed promise but have very limited big league résumés. None of their top prospects — infielder Leo De Vries nor lefties Gage Jump and Jamie Arnold — have even reached Triple-A, and there has never been a pre-debut extension for a pitcher.
