Athletics Land La Stella as Oakland Sends Barreto to Angels in Infielder Swap

An All-Star last season with the Angels, Tommy La Stella is the newest member of the Oakland Athletics roster. The A's dealt Franklin Barreto, who was out of options and who wasn't playing, south to get La Stella, who is a free agent at the end of the season.

The Oakland A’s started what could be a busy weekend of roster roulette Friday with the trade of second baseman Franklin Barreto to the Angels, getting All-Star second baseman Tommy La Stella in return.

How exactly La Stella will be used is still up in the air. General manager David Forst said on a conference call that he’ll talk with manager Bob Melvin about that before Saturday’s doubleheader in Houston against the Astros.

Forst said he told La Stella one of the reasons he’d traded for him was “we were just tired of him raking against us from the other side.” The lefty had a .305/.371/.389 slash line against the A’s this year, including a homer, after a .365/.411/.462 slash line against Oakland in 2019.

Forst said the club is where management had expected it to be – currently with the best record in the American League at 22-10 – and as such he’ll continue to look for deals that will beef up the roster. It won’t be easy, just in the sense that the A’s have one of the deepest rosters in the game.

“We’ll continue to have conversations,” Forst said. “In a shortened season (60 games instead of 162), there’s still some uncertainty as to who’s buying and who’s selling. And that’s somewhat heightened by the fact that we’re 30 games in and have 30 left to play (actually 32 and 28). But generally, we’ve all sort of found familiar tones in the conversations around just making trades.”

La Stella was the opening day second baseman for the Angels and he comes to Oakland with four homers, 14 RBI and a .273/.372/.475 slash line.

There isn’t any obvious spot for La Stella to get at-bats. A left-handed hitter, he will have to fight Tony Kemp, who has a .246/.378/.279 slash line. However, he’s been at his best the last three weeks, getting those numbers up to .275/.383/.314 from Aug. 4-26.

There’s a possibility that the A’s could use La Stella as a left-handed designated hitter with Khris Davis struggling, and he could be a piece to be dealt as part of a package as the trade deadline comes up on Monday.

For the moment, La Stella and Kemp are the only second baseman manager Bob Melvin can put forward. Chad Pinder is on paternity leave; he and Barreto were the only right-handed hitting second baseman on the roster, and Pinder and Kemp were basically in a platoon. There is also Vimael Machin, but he, like La Stella and Kemp, is left-handed.

La Stella, 31, is a free agent at the end of this season. He was a part-time player from 2014-18 with the Braves and the Cubs, but he found himself with the Angels, making it onto the American League All-Star team last year, although a fractured tibia kept him out of the game.

Since the start of the 2019 season, he’s hit 20 homers and has as many walks (35) as strikeouts.

Barreto, a second baseman/shortstop by trade, was basically a pinch-runner for the A’s, having just 10 at-bats in the team’s first 32 games.

Barreto, who was the last remaining piece of the Josh Donaldson trade with the Blue Jays. He’s been a solid Triple-A hitter, including a .295/.374/.552 season last year at Triple-A Las Vegas, a stop that included 19 homers.

Barreto came over with third baseman Brett Lawrie, starting pitchers Kendall Graveman and Sean Nolan in exchange for Donaldson, who’d been at the heart of the A’s offense from 2012-14. Lawrie and Nolan were out of baseball by 2016 and Graveman, now in the Mariners’ rotation, had Tommy John surgery in 2018 and missed all of 2019.

But Barreto had never had much success in the big leagues, including being hitless this year in those 10 at-bats after hitting .123 last season. Forst said part of that was on the A’s themselves, saying “we were never able to give him the full-time opportunity that he probably needs in the big leagues to get settled.”

“He’s a super kid, and I hope this is a good opportunity for him,” Forst said. “I hope he gets the chance to play, because the talent is obviously there. And I’m not sure this was ever a fair look for him here.”

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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