{"id":88929,"date":"2025-03-06T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=88929"},"modified":"2025-03-06T12:40:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T19:40:16","slug":"athletics-news-3-6-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=88929","title":{"rendered":"Athletics News: 3\/6\/2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"MVS contributor Tim Byrnes fires his thoughts about the A’s and their locations…as well as the outfield situation.<\/span><\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

By Tim Byrnes<\/p>\n

Ah! What do we call this mix of youngsters?<\/p>\n

Las Vegas A’s, because that is the final destination?<\/p>\n

The Oakland A’s, because who knows with ownership?<\/p>\n

Do we thank West Sacramento by giving them the A’s name, or does Sacramento Proper rip off the name while Sutter Health Park is in West Sac?<\/p>\n

Whatever the name, the park is eleven exits from this writer’s house, and I intend to be there often.<\/p>\n

While the Athletics are mostly a mix of young talent and journeymen, the talent level is easy to see, and there will be some hard decisions to make.<\/p>\n

Right-fielder Lawrence Butler is off to a blistering spring, slashing .563-batting average\/1.588 OPS, with two home runs and five RBIs. Lawrence is building on a solid last 2024.<\/p>\n

Center-fielder J.J. Bleday is hitting at a respectable .333 clip\u2014as of March 5th. Both Bleday and Butler seem to have secured their spots.<\/p>\n

Left field has the ‘official whisper’ of being a Seth Brown and Miguel Andujar platoon.<\/p>\n

Both played for the A’s last season. Brown took 70 more at-bats in 49 more games and batted .231 with 26 extra-base hits and 44 RBIs.
\nAndujar batted .285 with 19xbh\/30Rbi.<\/p>\n

WAR had Brown at 0.6 and Andujar at 0.4.<\/p>\n

On paper, Andujar should start, or at least start 2\/3rds of games, but Brown is slated to be the primary in left. <\/p>\n

Andujar is making it difficult, though. He is tearing up the preseason, batting .467 with a staggering 1.489 OPS, while Brown is struggling, going 2 for 17 for a .118 average.
\nAndujar bats .272 vs. RHP and .278 vs. LHP, which is far more production than his likely platoon buddy.<\/p>\n

Athletics have a decision to make.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MVS contributor Tim Byrnes fires his thoughts about the A’s and their locations…as well as the outfield situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11059],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88929"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88931,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88929\/revisions\/88931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}