The A’s announced this afternoon that center fielder Ramón Laureano underwent core surgery yesterday. He suffered the injury during his personal training regimen. The team expects he’ll still be ready for Spring Training.
Laureano hasn’t played since August 6, when MLB handed down an 80-game suspension after he tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug. That ruled him out for this season’s final 53 contests, and he’ll miss the first 27 games of next season to complete that punishment.
Over 378 plate appearances, Laureano hit .246/.317/.443 with fourteen home runs. He’s eligible for arbitration for the first time this offseason, where he’ll be part of a loaded class that could lead to some significant roster changes for the low-payroll A’s. Oakland looked to be in solid playoff position for much of the year, but they’ll head into the winter having come up a few games short of the postseason for the first time since 2017.
PEDs
Informative comment. Thank you.
Thoughts and prayers for a speedy recovery.
Roids are bad for the core.
The absence of PEDs was more than likely a factor. “He suffered the injury during his personal training regimen.” Can’t push yourself as hard. Nor can you workout as often or as long.
PEDs help you work harder.
But that’s really about all they do.
And unfairly help you get ripped
That’s an interesting spin, @Mias.
See, now I think if you are working out with greater fervency & frequency that you actually deserve to get cut.
But.
It’s the internet. Differences of opinion often arise.
Which help you when playing football or fighting in MMA, but being ripped does not make you a better baseball player.
Tyler O’Neil dad says being ripped will help make one though.
D’accord, @hiflew.
Professional athletes work out to get/stay in shape. To get stronger. To become their physical best.
Getting “ripped” is just a side-effect.
Hardcore to the Core baby!!
No Laureano til may and Starling Marte possibly leaving in free agency. The A’s are going to have to go OF shopping this winter because i can’t see them trotting out Mark Canha, Seth Brown, Stephen Piscotty, and Skye Bolt to start next season and they will likely need a DH too as Mitch Moreland did not hit well all season (though i could see Khris Davis being brought back on a minor league contract)
Oakland back in rebuild mode. Trade Chapman and Olson now. The Rangers and Angels probably willing to spend this Off-season. Oakland could be on the bottom looking up
I will take Matt Olson to my Cubs please and can you throw in a Frankie Montas on the side?
@Dunk Dunkington You already stole Schwindel from us, go away you have done enough.
They were in the wild card hunt until the last week of the season. It’s not like they are a team with no chance next year. There is ABSOLUTELY no reason for Oakland to rebuild now.
There is ABSOLUTELY a reason for Oakland to rebuild now, and a very very good one. It’s called money. They can’t pay their players anymore, at least not this round of good ones. Gotta wait until the next cheap class comes along.
Money might be a reason to sell a piece or two for younger players, but no way should they be trying to go full rebuild because the Angels (HA) or Rangers (HA HA) or even the Mariners (who played way above their heads) might improve in 2022.
Trading Olson or Chapman for a good haul could work , although neither is likely to be super expensive in 2022. Maybe you trade Bassitt while his value is pretty high. But this team is set up to compete in 2022. Maybe a full rebuild starts after NEXT season, or next July if they disappoint, but a team like Oakland has to take their opportunities when they come.
The Mariners are loaded with young talent. If anything, they will get better in the years ahead. Kelenic has been crushing it lately.
The A’s ended up replacing Marcus Semien with Elvis Andrus. Considering how things played out, that was the dumbest move of the season.
I’m not so sure that the Mariners have been playing above their heads. That’s turning into a pretty good team in Seattle and it should only get better in coming years.
The Mariners do have talent, but this year they have a -48 run differential. That is basically the same as the Rockies at -49 who have 16 fewer wins. Now I’m not trying to claim that run differential is the end all and be all like some people, but it does show something. To me, it shows a team that is due for some regression next season.
I could be wrong, but I could be right also.
Oh yeah, that .260 OBP and -1.9 WAR for Kelenic is really awesome.
The A’s still ended up with the better end of that Andrus/Krush Davis trade.
lmao. Who they gonna trade? Chapman’s value plummeted, Laureano is suspended, Olson is staying as said by Forst, Bassitt staying. I guess Manaea would be the one to go. Montas is cheap, also staying.
Don’t forget that there is a chance that MLB will implement a 100 million dollar payroll minimum. That changes everything for Oakland.
That is a good point about the salary floor. I really hope it goes through because it will halt these drastic rebuilds. I don’t mind teams that are having bad seasons in July trading off players to play for the future. It only makes sense. My problem is when that mindset continues for half a decade or even more, With the insane amount of player movement that happens every year, ANY team can rebuild into a competitive team in one off season if they just spend money.
Check Kelenic’s numbers for the last two months; he’s not the same kid who went 0 for forever before he got sent back to AAA.
He’s performed no worse than average for a while now, as a rookie. He’s a huge part of why they’ve been able to keep pace as the season winds down.
@mlbnyyfan
Nope, totally wrong: the A’s have too many pieces to sell them all, the window isn’t closed until 2023 at minimum. A’s gotta reload on 1 year deals this year.
Olson, Chapman, Murphy, Laureano, Bassitt, Manaea, Montas is the current long-term core. That’s too many guys to trade. At most they flip Olson if say, Tampa wants to offer them Brujan+3 players. If not, it will be too easy to just scour the massive FA market for bargains to fill in the blanks. Nick Allen is the best defensive SS alive today, he can platoon with Andrus there as the veteran+rookie combo next year. Canha was absolutely terrible this season, if he has a .900 OPS then he’s getting 3/50 but now he will have to settle for 1/5, which Oakland could actually give him.
Oakland still has a better 40 man roster in terms of talent than Seattle, Texas and LAA and no amount of spending will fix that.
I get what youre saying, but youre a year too soon here. 2023 when Manaea is a FA is when the rebuild might happen. Or maybe they get a new park and Fisher finally decides to invest in the on-field product for once in his utterly miserable ownership history.
@UK
I agree with most of this, but Canha has a 2.5 WAR for the year now, even after struggling to hit in Aug and Sept.
I hope you’re right about the off-season…
Keep Olson, trade Chapman before his value declines further.
Canha is FA iirc
Mark Canha is a free agent too.
Luis Barrera is on the 40 Man Roster and up with the A’s right now. Cody Thomas is likely to be in the mix next season. For some reason the A’s insist on running Chad Pinder out there on a regular basis, too.
So he used PED’s because he had this injury all along and was trying to heal it?
It’s almost like PED’s aren’t entirely bad things or something!!
His trainer should have stopPED pushing him. Not sure if he injured himself PEDaling on the exercise bike or ripPED a muscle doing strenuous lifting because he was too amPED up, but I’m sure the A’s had hoPED he was more careful. Hopefully he learned from his mistake and revamPED his supplement intake.
Is it me or is Laureano the 4th or 5th player this month to get core surgery? I know Akin from Baltimore had it and I believe there were 3 or 4 others too who were previously mentioned on MLBTR. All these swings and misses and all these max velocity pitches seem to be causing severe damage to a lot of players’ cores. Sounds like they need to get some ab rollers in the clubhouse or better yet, get Tony Little to build some new fangled machine the players can use to strengthen their cores. It’s a marketers dream too. “Who do you want to look like, Tony Little or Grady Little”? or “You can’t score with a weak core”!”
In all seriousness, core injuries are brutal for a baseball player; but it’s such a general term used to describe many types of injuries. Core surgery could be for a hernia, could be for a torn abdominal muscle, a rib fracture repair, rib cartilage tear and could even be used to describe surgery on the colon. I’m wondering what type of injury and surgery Laureano is having? Each of these require very different surgical procedures and recovery periods too. Let’s hope it’s something minor like a sports hernia and Laureano is able to fully recover. His PED case seemed a little fishy to me (I want to believe he did not purposely take any banned substance), but either way, he’s an exciting player and the game is better when he’s playing at full health. Get well soon!
Define core surgery?
Surgery in the area of your tallywhacker and the muscles attached to that area.
The As have 12 players headed for FA and another 12 headed for arby.
They also have a system without much upper level talent close to being MLB ready.
And they have dont have enough money to keep what they have, let alone go out and get somebody that can help.
They went for it this year and came up short.
Call it rebuilding, retooling, whatever. But they are gonna take a step back next year.