The Athletics recently went ice cold, a fact acknowledged general manager David Forst today. “Unfortunately, it’s colored a lot by the way we played the past three weeks,” Forst said of the club’s first half, per Martín Gallegos of MLB.com. He said that they did play well for a while but admitted that they “obviously need to start playing better baseball in a hurry.”
A few weeks ago, the A’s were 38-38 and held the final Wild Card spot in the American League. They have since gone 3-17, dropping them to 41-55. That only puts them 6.5 games back of a playoff spot in the weak American League field but they would have to leapfrog seven teams to get back into postseason position.
Forst’s comment about needing to play better very soon is clearly a reference to the August 3 trade deadline, which is now just over two weeks away. The team is now down to a less than 2% chance of a playoff berth, per the Playoff Odds at FanGraphs. They will need to come out of the All-Star Break red hot or else the front office will have to do some selling.
MLBTR recently took a look at the club’s deadline as part of the Trade Deadline Outlook series for subscribers. The club’s impending free agents aren’t performing very well, so it could be a quiet deadline unless they decide to shop Shea Langeliers, who is controlled for two more seasons beyond this one.
The A’s have already given up on one of their impending free agents, as Aaron Civale was designated for assignment this week. He could still be traded in the next few days but his value will be minimal as a soft-tossing journeyman with a 5.42 earned run average.
Forst tells Gallegos that Civale’s departure will allow Jacob Lopez to get another rotation chance. Lopez seemed to establish himself as a viable starter last year. He made 21 appearances, including 17 starts, and posted a 4.08 ERA with a 28.3% strikeout rate and 9.3% walk rate. That performance got him a rotation job to start 2026 but he got optioned to the minors in early June after posting a 6.75 ERA over 12 outings.
After being optioned, he didn’t pitch for two weeks, then made a couple of abbreviated Triple-A appearances, tossing a combined 3 2/3 innings in those. He then got back on a normal routine, making two traditional starts for Las Vegas, logging a combined 11 1/3 innings with one earned run allowed. He then was recalled to the big leagues and made two appearances, one in relief and one as a opener. He’ll now get another shot to work as a starter, hopefully with results more like last year’s.
Turning to the coaching staff, the A’s fired pitching coach Scott Emerson earlier this week and promoted bullpen coach Dan Hubbs to take replace Emerson on an interim basis. Today, Forst tells Gallegos that former big leaguer Javy Guerra will be promoted from the minors to replace Hubbs as bullpen coach for the rest of this season.
Guerra, 40, is not to be confused with the 30-year-old righty of the same name who is with the White Sox on a minor league deal. The elder Guerra pitched in the majors from 2011 to 2021, suiting up for the Dodgers, White Sox, Angels, Marlins, Blue Jays and Nationals. He won a title with Washington in 2019, making two postseason appearances for that club. He pitched in Mexico in 2022 and 2023. In 2025, the A’s hired him as pitching coach for the Double-A Midland RockHounds. He had been in that job until this big league promotion.
Photo courtesy of D. Ross Cameron, Imagn Images
