The Athletics announced Monday that they’ve designated first baseman Dermis Garcia for assignment. His spot on the 40-man roster will go to lefty Sam Long, whom they acquired from the Giants in exchange for cash yesterday. Long is going directly onto the active roster, and in a corresponding move, righty Adrian Martinez has been placed on the 15-day injured list with a right elbow strain.
Garcia, 25, was a longtime Yankees prospect who never got a call to the big leagues before reaching minor league free agency. He signed with the A’s in March of 2022 and parlayed a .264/.349/.498 showing (106 wRC+) into his big league debut. He got into 39 games with the 2022 A’s, batting .207/.264/.388 with five home runs, a 6.4% walk rate and a dismal 44% strikeout rate.
Making contact has long been an issue for Garcia, who has regularly shown above-average power but has also regularly punched out in more than 30% of his plate appearances in a given season. Overall, he’s fanned in 33.4% of his minor league plate appearances. The A’s will have a week to trade Garcia or attempt to pass him through outright waivers.
The injury to Martinez is a concerning development for an A’s club that has struggled immensely to develop pitchers and has thus far received underwhelming results from the early stages of its current rebuild. The 26-year-old Martinez, one of two players acquired from the Padres in exchange for Sean Manaea, posted sharp minor league numbers for the majority of his time with the San Diego organization but has been hit hard with the A’s — both in limited MLB action and in their ludicrously hitter-friendly Triple-A Las Vegas setting.
Oakland has had the worst starting staff in baseball this season, and it hasn’t been particularly close. Martinez has been working primarily out of the bullpen for them in 2023 but has done so in multi-inning stints, logging 17 1/3 frames of relief with a 6.75 ERA.
Martinez started the season quite strong, with a 3.27 ERA through 11 innings, but he’s been torched for nine runs in a combined 6 1/3 innings over his past two appearances. The Venezuelan-born righty actually has a decent 20.1% strikeout rate and 7.2% walk rate in 75 Major League frames, but he’s been undone by a sky-high 1.92 HR/9 mark. The A’s haven’t announced a timetable for his return. Given that Martinez threw as many as 70 pitches in a single relief outing, it’s feasible that he could have eventually been a rotation option for the team if needed. That may still be the case, but it’s now dependent on how long he’ll be sidelined. The A’s have not yet announced a potential timetable or any details beyond the initial diagnosis.
Swing and Dermis…
Well at least fan(s) can look forward to some future up and comers that are in the system that should be in the majors by around ’26 or ’27 … oh, wait a minute …
Oh I liked Dermis. I hope he can stay with the young rebuilding A’s. He is certainly a sole dimensional 1B/DH but there is plenty of chances up for grabs still…
Brent Rooker, Jordan Diaz and Carlos Perez likely stole any playing time / at bats that existed behind Jesus Aguilar.
Jonah Brdie could be the next player on the 40-Man Hot Seat.
The A’s are going to win 40 games this year. Their hitting isn’t even bad but that pitching staff is rancid
Luckily they have about 25 SP prospects along with Drew Rucinski getting ready at AAA.
In my opinion, Joey Estes, Royber Salinas, Luis Medina and Spencer Patton are “next up” if the current bunch of pitchers are still being young and learning and making those mistakes that lose games and turn this into a rebuilding year, but also I still think Shintaro can work out of the pen, which is what he was doing in Japan prior to this. If Shintaro and Patton are good RPs, that solves some of these issues.
I think the A’s aren’t THIS bad, like you said the hitting and defense is fine and even pretty great in places, it really is just the pitching right now, unfortunately when you’re rebuilding, you will never get all three until you actually are contending and have an 85+ win team.
Estuery Ruiz has the superstar gene, and Langeliers is looking like a decent everyday MLB catcher at minimum. Capel, Rooker and Noda aren’t looking bad either. The offense is WAY better than last season. Lots to like about Oakland’s future, its just the immediate present is going to be pretty loss-filled for the foreseeable future.
almost all my predictions in this post have come true – A’s please make me GM
We’re rocking that “Big Royals Energy”.
What terrible rebuild trades thus far
Just bring up Soderstrom already and plant him at first base. Rather lose 120 with potential stars than with Jesus Aguilar. Oh, and FU John Fisher
They designated Dermis?
No skin in the game for the A’s.
Didn’t even think about the A’s moving to Vegas where the ball flies further than Denver. The A’s pitching will never be good again. Ever.
and after our Pitchers serve their 6-Years of Service time, they will be Bolting for more Pitcher-friendly stadiums, just like the Rockies pitchers do.
Will they be the Las Vegas A’s of Oakland?
They wont even make it to Las Vegas, this team is owned by the biggest morons you can imagine, just worthless, sentient piles of money with no heart, mind or soul. Billionaires really are awful, barely-human beings at their core. Why do you need that much money? $3M is 60 years of $50K a year, anyone can live off that.
Huge reason why MLB will likely block this move. Las Vegas is NOT a pro sports town, San Jose is.