What if Arizona Cardinals QB Kyler Murray Didn't Sign with the A's?
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The A's front office has made some decisions that they would likely want to take back over the course of the past two decades, but that can be true of most people in charge for so long. Even the Los Angeles Dodgers, with Farhan Zaidi at the helm, traded away a prospect named Yordan Alvarez for reliever Josh Fields.
Bad decisions are made sometimes. But one of the worst ones that the A's front office made was selecting Arizona Cardinals QB Kyler Murray ninth overall in 2018, and then allowing him to continue to play football for just one more (Heisman-winning) college season. He was then selected by the Cardinals with the first overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft.
He obviously ended up signing with the Cardinals, and going on to play football. But he also signed with the A's, as well. Yet, if the A's had the foresight to see this ending poorly, or at least had protected themselves against that scenario, perhaps they wouldn't have signed him in the first place. Failure to sign a draft pick would have netted them the No. 10 pick in the 2019 MLB Draft.
This is the same way that the Houston Astros ended up with Alex Bregman second overall in 2015. They received that pick because they failed to sign Brady Aiken in 2014, and were laughed at plenty for being unable to sign the No. 1 overall pick. The Bregman selection made up for it. They also landed Kyle Tucker with the No. 5 pick that same draft.
So if the A's had not signed Murray, who would they have ended up with?
With the Tenth Overall Pick in the 2019 MLB Draft, the A's Select...
The A's could have gone a number of different ways with this pick. The Atlanta Braves has just selected current A's catcher Shea Langeliers with the ninth pick, and the San Francisco Giants, who owned the tenth pick, went with outfielder Hunter Bishop.
Now 27, he has yet to make the big leagues and elected minor-league free agency this winter after batting .252 with a .316 OBP and seven home runs in Triple-A Sacramento. The hope would be that the A's wouldn't have made that pick.
Instead, the 11th overall pick (also a free agent this winter) was Alec Manoah. He came up when Sean Manaea was still in green and gold, and that pairing would have been a lot of fun. Yet, the A's weren't necessarily taking a lot of pitchers in the first round at this time. They went from A.J. Puk sixth overall in 2016 to waiting until 2025 to select Jamie Arnold.
Perhaps Manoah would have broken that streak sooner, or maybe they would have continued down the list. Given that Manoah debuted in 2021 and won AL Rookie of the Year, maybe the A's would have run it back for 2022 instead of trading Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, Chris Bassitt and Sean Manaea.
The best selection they could have possibly made—and it would have change the course of history for the Arizona Diamondbacks—would have been to select Corbin Carroll. Turns out the A's failure to sign Murray helped out two franchises in Arizona.
Carroll ended up going to Arizona with the No. 16 overall pick, and there are a couple of reasons the A's may have looked at him at No. 10.
The first being that they could probably get him for a slightly underslot deal, given that he signed for $3.745 million, while Bishop, who went to the Giants at ten, signed for $4.097 million. That would have set the A's up for later in the draft while also (as we know now) getting the best player available.
The other reason they could have ended up going with Carroll is that the A's ended up selecting both Tyler Soderstrom and Max Muncy in the first round out of high school in 2020 and 2021, so they were seemingly on the path of going the high school route in their drafting process. They had also just taken Austin Beck out of HS in 2017, so this wasn't something they were averse to by any means.
How Would This Shape the A's Current Roster?
The unanswerable question is what kind of an impact Carroll would have had on the A's trajectory ahead of this point in the franchise's history. He debuted in 2022, so it's likely that the last teardown would have still happened, but how would the A's have been in 2022, 2023 and beyond? Would they have still claimed Brent Rooker off waivers ahead of '23, knowing they had Carroll?
One big question is what other moves would have been made.
The other is where the A's would have ended up finishing year after year. They have had the No. 4 and No. 6 picks in two of the last three drafts, and that may not have been the case with Carroll on board. Wilson likely would have been selected, given that he was ranked a bit lower than where the A's took him anyway, so a drop of a few spots wouldn't have changed that.
Nick Kurtz on the other hand would be an interesting one. While the front office believed Kurtz was the top player in the draft from day one, if Carroll was on the roster, and Soderstrom was at first in that scenario, would they have taken a first baseman? The fact that they made that pick with Soderstrom on the roster already should suggest they would have again, even with Carroll.
Yet, would they have had the chance to select Kurtz? It's tough to tell how much further Kurtz would have fallen, and if the A's were picking seventh or eighth instead of fourth, would he have still been on the board?
On the one hand, you could add Carroll to the A's roster and see a pretty darn good squad. At the same time, the A's outfield is already filled with solid players and potential gold glovers in the near future.
Would the A's have traded Carroll in 2021 instead of Jesús Luzardo (or in a Luzardo-esque deal) to give that group one last run? Would that team have been given another opportunity in 2022? There are a lot of interesting avenues to consider here, and not all of them necessarily make the A's a better team right now.
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Jason has been covering the A’s at various sites for over a decade, and was the original host of the Locked on A’s podcast. He also covers the Stanford Cardinal as they attempt to rebuild numerous programs to prominence.
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