The Oakland Athletics released starting pitcher Marco Estrada today, the team announced.
The move doesn’t come as a total surprise, as Estrada has not pitched for Oakland since April 16th. It’s a disappointing turn nonetheless for the veteran Estrada. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser tweets that Estrada was simply unable to get healthy, which led to his release.
After his 5th and final start of the season on April 16th, the A’s placed Estrada on the injured list with a lumbar strain, but didn’t officially move him to the 60-day injured list until July. Since the end of July, Estrada made 5 starts between three levels of the minor leagues, but he just hasn’t gotten healthy enough to make his way back to the big league club.
Estrada seemed like a good fit for Oakland’s patchwork rotation when he signed a one-year, $4MM deal late in January. His five starts all resulted in Oakland losses, however, and he’ll finish his tenure with a 6.85 ERA/7.53 FIP.
Should this be the end of the line for the 36-year-old Estrada, he would finish 62-68 in 194 career stars and 89 relief appearances with a 4.29 ERA/4.45 FIP/4.59 xFIP totaling 12.3 rWAR/11.4 fWAR. A 12-year career that began in DC with the Nationals has included stops with the Brewers, Blue Jays, and now Athletics.
oh no
Oh no!
Ohhh yeaaaaaaa
-cook aid guy
Swing and a miss
Who’s cook aid guy?
Lol you know the cook aid guy? He aids you whilst you cook….
That’s too bad, he seems like a good guy who always put everything he had on the field. I wish him the best whether it’s another run at trying to get healthy and pitch again or something else post-playing career.
Had some great years with the Jays. Was a clutch playoff pitcher. All the best.
Yes.
Two great years…..
Good contribution tool
He wasn’t taking a roster space and couldn’t get healthy so why release him? Am I missing something here? This seems like a low class move for the A’s.
His checks will still clear.
Hopefully…..
Yeah, their owner is the 15th richest person to own a sporting team ON THE PLANET. Don’t think he’ll bounce what he makes in a day.
moneyinc.com/the-20-richest-mlb-owners-in-the-worl…
Yet, A’s fans have to hear about how “purse strings are tight” – what a load of crud. Fisher is a goon who hates the A’s fanbase with a passion. He’s probably been a Giants fan the whole time.
Net worth doesn’t equate to personal wealth. You should probably take a basic finance class or something, because even first year college students should know that. It’s pretty basic stuff.
And yes, John Fisher hates the A’s with a passion so much he watches 70% of games from behind the plate. He REALLY hates the A’s. Unbelievable. /s
He was to come off the IL. They couldn’t keep him on any longer once his rehab was over. So they needed his 40 man spot. Better to let a guy go that can’t contribute than put a player on waivers and hope they make it through.
Strike four you are willingly an absolute idiot. That’s the 15th richest MLB owner. I’m not sure how you can possibly spin that into how he’s the 15th richest person to own a team in the world? Do you just read the words that like you to see? You make a garbage claim and link an article that says otherwise…..
What’s a load of crap is fans like you somehow not understanding that no owner is going to operate at a loss, that would just be moronic. If you think they should be operating at a loss you’re just an idiot who doesn’t understand how real life works.
Why string a guy along when there is no chance he’ll pitch another inning for the organization? His rehab starts were not promising, in Single A or Triple A, even if the environment in Triple A shouldn’t be taken seriously. If he gets healthy before September he’ll help some team down the stretch, whether it’s an organization looking for innings or an organization that thinks he can help them in the rotation or out of the bullpen.
And talking about “low class moves,” we’re not like the Yankees and White Sox. We don’t string guys along and give them false hope they’ll pitch again in the majors for us. That’s even more cruel than just releasing him.
The A’s are low class as it comes, they refuse to field the best possible team their owners could afford. No team’s ownership disrespects their fans more than the A’s.
The team hasnt been super profitable and Fisher hasnt wanted to lose money while the team was in limbo year after year. Expect things to change a lot soon. The team is one of the only ones in any sport recently to privately fund there stadium.
They can afford to lose money over the next three years when the new park opens. 2023 opt out on the TV deal so they can get a new TV contract in one of the US largest markets while moving into a new park.
On top of that they have minimal future commits, and even if they extend players since the deals will pay them around arb numbers for the arb years none of the more expensive years will even come until 2024 when they have a whole different financial outlook.
First off, I’d like to introduce you to Bob Nutting.
Second off, name an owner that is still alive that spends their own money to field the best possible team they can. I bet you can’t. The last one that did was Mike Illich, and before that it was Walter Haas Jr.
Teams that spend as much as they do do it because they make the money to do it. If the opposite were true than 24 other owners also disrespect their teams by not spending their own money to put the best possible team they can on the field.
You quantify spending availability by an owner’s net worth. You’re a moron. Good day.
MLBTR staff, is there a rule against propagating wrong information? Because that’s all this clown does whenever the A’s are mentioned. It’s actually really frustrating to read as a fan who actually cares about the team and doesn’t have an opinion fueled by SF Chronicle nonsense.
A’s actually spent more than they made last year, so it isn’t even profitable right now. It’s profitable in the sense that the overall value of the team has multiplied 6 times, but yearly revenue isn’t exactly putting money in his pockets. The value of the team as it as has peaked until a new ballpark gets built or a new TV deal is signed, so that he’s still trying to get things done is an encouraging sign.
But honestly don’t bother with Strike Four. I’ve been convinced for months he’s an SF Chronicle programmed bot that takes the most popular, and usually most incorrect, opinions from Twitter, Reddit and Facebook posts and frankensteins them together to post here whenever the A’s are mentioned.
Hey justin_turner_overdrive/justANotherAsfan/Strike Four, your schtick is soooo tired now…
athleticsnchill is the worst kind of homer, period.
grow up, your team isnt as great as you constantly defend them as being. cry about my TRUTHS being rubbed in your face.
The kind of mental gymnastics you do…
Yeah, I’m a homer like most people that are actually fans of teams. I do however see the mistakes my franchise make and call them out on it constantly. I started the “bring Corban Joseph up” crusade long before you did, and I’m still of the opinion they should bring Heim up in a week if Herrmann continues to struggle.
However, that’s just not fair to Herrmann, who missed half the season after undergoing knee surgery, and he’s been an adequate defender behind the plate.
What I won’t do is I won’t make a knee jerk reaction based on a couple of games worth of stats. 27 teams in baseball don’t do that, as fans who want to be informed we shouldn’t either. The Mariners, Giants and Mets are the notable exceptions to that, and while 2 of those teams are playing “better” they also play in a weaker league.
Come on strike four what is low class is a team like the O’s who are at the bottom every years. What about the Tigers that have a very bad team. last time the jays made the playoffs or the Angels. Sounds to me you root for a team that the A’s trounce all the time and now you are just bitter about the A’s.
Or even the Astros, who spent less in 2012 than they received in revenue sharing and fielded one of the worst teams in baseball history as part of a plan to collect as many early draft picks as possible? Every team has their lows, and the A’s don’t have them very often. As someone pointed out below, the A’s did hold on to Estrada long enough to pass 10 years in service time. That’s not nothing.
arc89….guess what? they’re ALL bad!!!
well, except the tigers, whos owners tried their best and got them as close as they could….kind of my point. as an A’s fan, how can you sit there last November and listen to the owners talk a big game about how they were going to “go big” and sign some pitching so Melvin didn’t have to use an opener in a WC game, and they bring you…Estrada, Anderson and Fiers? 2/30 for Charlie Morton is too rich? Nope. MLB needs to only allow people who actually want to win, not only make money for themselves, not people like money grubbing John Fischer. $100M is a drop in the ocean for guys like him, but he’d rather the A’s be profitable, not successful on the field.
This penny-pinching moneyball crud has only ever made the players make less and the owners make more. It’s not even about the A’s winning. It’s disgusting that we champion capitalist propaganda like that.
First off, John Fisher doesn’t say anything, so I don’t know where you’re getting this whole “go big and sign some pitching” nonsense from because he never said that. Come to think of it neither did Billy Beane Gonna have to source that information or I’ll just have to assume it’s more BS.
As for John Fisher, he attends games, but he has very little input on how the day to day operations of the organization is run. That’s entirely up to Billy Beane and Dave Kaval and the teams they’ve assembled. Personally I like it better that way, I’d prefer to see as little of my team’s owner as possible when it comes to business decisions. Bob Nutting is heavily involved in how his team is run, and the Pirates is a clown show as a result.
Now for your hypothetical. What does Charlie Morton have to do with anything? Is the team starving for starting pitching right now? The A’s pitching carried a month where the offense was stagnant. It also didn’t make much sense to invest $30M in one pitcher when we could put together a rotation out of nothing and end up okay. The A’s did offer DJ Lemahieu the same exact contract the Yankees offered him, Lemahieu chose the Yankees over the A’s and I don’t necessarily blame him.
And like we’ve been saying this entire article, no owner operates at a loss. The team spends what they can and still operates at a loss.
Needed the 40 man spot for puk
$800,000 a start!
He’s at $278,350 per start in his career.
ATTN all parents: your kids are playing baseball. period. unless you don’t need money…
We heard in these pages in 2017 that Estrada was done in 2017 and that it was going to be a bad signing for the for 2018 [and 2019] seasons..
He had a couple of great years for the Jays and great moment in the playoffs.
Farewell Marco.
Ooh ooh do Profar and Herrmann next
I hope they extend both of them just to piss you off. That’d be worth having to watch them every game.
man, you really love terrible baseball, huh? probably shouldnt follow the A’s then, they have the 5th most wins since 1968!
Of course I don’t like terrible baseball, but I’m the one that actually watches the games, not the one that sits there and surfs baseball-reference.com and fangraphs.com to find relevant and incriminating statistics to shove down people’s throats.
So….I can’t do both? Weirdo…
If you watched this team you’d see more than the stuff you complain about it. Herrmann isn’t a great hitter, but he frames well and calls a good game. Not sure how many catchers in the game would have seen the early action on his splitter last night and decided to call that pitch 30% of the time, but he did and he got 5 2/3 good innings out of Bailey against a tough Yankees lineup.
Profar I’ll give you, but it doesn’t make much sense in DFAing him right now unless we’re convinced a combination of Neuse and Corban carries us to the postseason at second.
With an ERA over 5, dude is the PERFECT fit for the Halos.
I wa sthinking the Os or tigers. Edwin jackson and Aaron Brooks still have jobs.
With an ERA over 5, dude would be a HORRIBLE fit for the Halos.
Brewers bring him back!
Red Sox. He’ll fit right in with the rest of the underachievers
Seen on Twitter this allowed Estrada to pass 10 years in service time and now he’ll receive the highest pension level possible. Classy by the A’s since they probably knew he wouldn’t have been back for a long time a while ago.
Thx Goat,,,that should be in the article, class act by the A’s
His back has caused him to miss time in the last 3 seasons for sure. Its says hes been pitching in the minorsbi wounder if he will give it a go again next season, on a tryout or camp invite. If he plays well enough sign a minor league deal with an opt out and insensitives based on MLB starts and/or innings pitched. For a guy that sits in the 88-90mph range He was a big time playoff pitcher for the jays and he had a few great seasons pitching in the AL east, sucked everywhere else he as been tho. I’d love to see him back with the jays next season, they need SP and his deal would fit Shapkins cheap spending ways and best case could fetch a decent prospect. I feel any AL east team should give him a camp invite at least because he was pretty effective there
Thoughts??
His first 2 seasons with the jays he jad the lowest hits per 9 in the AL and had a 3.13 era. Extreme fly ball guy probe to the HR and only had 1 season with 180+ innings
Marco
Polo
Estrada for nearly 2 years was outstanding in Toronto.