As Athletics Prepare to Resume Workouts, Battles for Starting Jobs Will Ramp Up

The Oakland Athletics will have their first workout post-pandemic come Saturday at the Oakland Coliseum. While most positions are secure, there are still competitions in left field, at second base and behind the plate as manager Bob Melvin looks to put together his best lineup.

With the A’s down to 41 players currently scheduled to take part in Oakland’s first workouts at the Coliseum come Saturday, there will be a few player position battles worth watching.

Second base, catcher and left field are three spots where manager Bob Melvin and his crew will have to make some difficult choices.

“You know, it’s a good problem to have,” Melvin said. “There are some decisions we’re still going to have to make. But we’ve got a lot of good options, and that’s where you want to be.”

With the trade Tuesday of Jorge Mateo to the Padres, the A’s have a platoon-in-the-making with left-hander Tony Kemp and right-hander Franklin Barreto at second base.

The A’s believe that Barreto, who has been a prospect for half a decade now since coming to the A’s in from Toronto in the Josh Donaldson trade of 2014 without making the expected breakthrough, could be an impact player. He’s never put it completely together, and given that he’s out of options, this could be his last chance with the A’s. The A’s want him to succeed, and Melvin will give him that chance to start the season.

He spent two brief tours with the A’s last year, including most of July and all of September, but he never got his average over .152, finishing at .123. That’s a counterpoint to his 2019 Triple-A season where he hit .295 for Las Vegas.

Kemp comes in with the advantage that goes to a left-handed hitter in a mostly right-handed lineup. Still, he hit just .212 last year in a season split between the Astros and the Cubs, and the .183 mark he made after the trade to Chicago meant that the Cubs were more than ready to have him move on. But he hit .263 for the Astros in 2018 in 97 games, 18 more than Barreto has in his three-year career.

Waiting on the outside is another lefty, Vimael Machin, a Rule 5 pickup from the Phillies through the Cubs, and if those options fail, Chad Pinder could be moved out of his utility role to get regular time at second.

“We brought in Kemp for a reason, and that was to play second base against right-handed pitcher,” Melvin said. “And the other side of the equation is what Barreto can bring to us. If someone struggles, Machin could fit in nicely. I think we go into this week with the same mindset we had where we left off in March.”

In Spring Training I, Barreto had a slash line of .306/.359/.528 in 36 at-bats, Kemp was at .345/.412/.483 in 34 at-bats and Machin finished at .333/.444/.400 in 30 at-bats.

Behind the plate, the plan going into Spring Training I was that Sean Murphy, who made his big-league debut last year with the A’s, would be the main man with Austin Allen, who made his Major League debut last year with the Padres, backing him up.

The advent of a 30-man roster to start the season widens the pool enough that Jonah Heim, who made the jump to Triple-A Las Vegas last year, has a good chance to force his way onto the roster.

The A’s are enamored of Murphy’s arm strength behind the plate and his power in the batting box, hitting four homers in 20 games with a .245/.444/566 slash line last year. He only got into four Spring Training I games, so his .375/.500/.875 slash line may be a bit misleading.

Allen’s homerless .215/.282/.277 season after coming up to the Padres last year didn’t show much, but in 15 games this spring, the left-hander was a monster with a .406/.441/.656 slash line that included a couple of homers. And he’s averaged 20 homers his last three minor league seasons.

The wild card in all this is Heim, whose season was one for the books after making the jump to Triple-A last season. In 35 games with the Aviators, he slashed .358/.412/.557 with four homers, and he came back this spring to turn in a .320/.370/.400 slash line in a dozen games.

Out in left field, that competition has gotten less media scrutiny, but Melvin says that while Stephen Piscotty and Ramon Laureano both are healthy and ready to take on right field and center field, respectively, the third man in the outfield may be on a play-it-by-ear basis.

“It’s going to be tough to find the right configuration every day,” the manager said. “We have good options in left field. And with Stephen healthy now, we’re going to have to talk quite a bit about what that outfield is going to look like.”

In left, Mark Canha is the heir apparent, even though Robbie Grossman actually spent more time in left last year with 112 games there. Canha got most of his outfield time in center thanks to injuries, but even so only had 90 games played in the outfield. Still, he came up with a career-best 26 homers in a career-high 126 games with a career-best slash line of .274/.396/.517.

And, forced into enter field by injuries, he showed a decent arm and the ability to cover a lot of ground, qualities that will play well in left field with Laureano expected to be back in center.

Grossman is a quality defender and the 138 games he got into last year was a career best, although his slash line of .240/.334/.348 was under his career average of .253/.351/.372.

And somewhere in there, Melvin is going to have to make room for Pinder. The jack-of-all-trades can play any infield or outfield position, and he was in left field last year more than anywhere else. Still, he can play second base, and there’s room for his bat – a minimum of 13 homers in fewer than 400 at-bats in each of the last three seasons – in the lineup as often at Melvin can find room.

The result of these battles will be seen in about three weeks when the team cuts its roster down to the 30 players who will start the season. Two weeks after that, the roster will go down to 28. And two weeks further will see the final roster limit of 26 kick in. 

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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