The A’s announced this evening they’ve acquired minor league reliever Lucas Erceg from the Brewers for cash. The 28-year-old was not on Milwaukee’s 40-man roster and will not immediately go on the Oakland 40-man.
A San Jose native, Erceg entered the professional ranks as Milwaukee’s second round pick in 2016. He was a third baseman at the time and generated a fair amount of attention from prospect evaluators early in his career. After multiple seasons of offensive struggles in the upper minors, he gradually fell off the prospect radar. He was sitting on a .223/.270/.379 batting line as a 26-year-old in Double-A two seasons ago when he and the organization agreed to transition to pitching.
Erceg has spent the past two and a half seasons pitching in the upper minors. As one might expect, his results have been mixed. Erceg has missed bats around a league average rate but struggled to throw strikes consistently. That’s understandable for someone who’s new to pitching full-time but has translated into a 5.07 ERA over 124 1/3 minor league frames.
The right-hander has allowed 15 runs (11 earned) over 15 1/3 frames with Triple-A Nashville this season. He’s fanned 16, walked ten and induced grounders at an excellent 53.8% rate. While Erceg clearly still isn’t a finished product, Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs named him the #32 prospect in the Milwaukee farm system last offseason. According to Longenhagen, Erceg’s fastball sits in the 96-99 MPH range. The A’s will take a flier on his power arm and lofty ground-ball totals in spite of the overall performance inconsistency.
As with much of the roster, Oakland’s bullpen has been among the league’s worst. The A’s entered play Wednesday with the highest bullpen ERA (6.64) and lowest strikeout rate (18%). Erceg won’t step immediately into that mix but should have a clearer path to an MLB job than he would’ve in Milwaukee if he can find success in Triple-A.
Oakland’s everything has been one of the leagues worst.
John Fisher is the exception. He’s one of every leagues worst. He actually wanted to build the new Las Vegas stadium out of the bones of foster children, but walked that back because he couldn’t find another way to supply himself with calcium.
Well good luck I honestly hope he makes it to the big leagues. He went through a rough patch with mental illness. wasn’t diagnosed for years. Has been on the right path. A good guy to pull for. Heck they should add Guerra and Varland to their bullpen too.
They paid Trevor May $7 million who pitched terrible and then has been away from the team for a month due to anxiety issues. Haven’t heard any updates on him.
He’s starting a rehab assignment
When he’s not curled up in the fetal position crying about not getting a pony when he was six, Trevor May has been pitching for Las Vegas for the last two weeks. If he can pitch in Vegas I’m not sure why he can’t do it in Oakland.
I wholeheartedly agree. At the same time, one hardly has to be diagnosed to know one has mental problems. We need to stop treating mental illness as if it’s some uncommon thing that is like a disease. Everyone has the same sort of thing to a greater or lesser degree. That uncomfortable feeling/anxiety or depression that comes up when you sit alone without any distractions is what we are all running from. For some a phone eating, shopping, etc. will keep it at bay enough for awhile. Others, generally people who don’t entirely fit in, have had a rougher childhood, and tend towards introversion more, will turn to substance abuse (alcohol is a drug). All intense forms of this are just extremes of what we all have wrong. All it is is not feeling capable of dealing with ones emotions, having an environment one feels is unsupportive to that, and not feeling up to making changes in ones life. Anxiety is fear of the future. Depression is largely an obsession with the past and projecting that forward and feeling doomed. It’s all a spiritual/existential crisis. It’s a product of our society/the modern world largely. Our society says “Be productive and if you start to feel “abnormal” (feel emotions) drink alcohol when you get off work, go shopping, get online, etc. There is no space for a deeper relationship with ones inner life. Men are taught to be ashamed of emotions, and they tend to be less aware of them to begin with anyway. That’s why they deal with this more frequently. Substance addiction is one of the hardest things to deal with imaginable. One of the main problems is modern society pumps out a message of “life has no meaning, it is all chance. You live on a random “pale blue dot”.” We have no sense of our lives being meaningful or being apart of something bigger. That’s why people tend to identify with a group or cause so easily.
I can’t believe I just wrote all that. Sorry for length. I could go on for days. I’ve dealt with it all too. Hope he is successful but it’s not all about baseball. He’s already a success story so far.
Hi Rishi, it’s ok you wrote all of that, please don’t worry. Hopefully your message will help someone head in the right direction or give them solace that they are not alone. You are brave. Good luck in your journey. Hugs
Thanks. I think professional sports are so odd. They wouldn’t touch a tobacco ad from a mile away but promote drinking and gambling in every commercial break. People should be allowed to gamble but there is no consistency in the messages they send out. Players aren’t supposed to use tobacco but when they win a playoff series we get the champagne and beer ready while a third of the crowd is drinking. I just think it’s hypocritical but I agree that people should be able to do what they want if they aren’t hurting anyone (who ever killed someone because of driving under the influence of tobacco?). And we suspend Reyes in the minor leagues for marijuana use (while big leaguers weren’t even tested). It’s all inconsistent.
Nevermind, you meant to the brewers BP.
I need to work up to long toss before getting on mound. Seems like the A’s are about to begin open tryouts soon for their bullpen. I am going to be ready.
At this rate, he’ll be their Opening Day starter in 2024.
Rollie Fingers was moved to the pen because he would worry the night before he started. He would lose sleep so he was ineffective. I believe John Hiller had similar issues too.
Charlie Finley couldn’t care less about how fingers was sleeping. He got moved to the bullpen because he was getting his brains beat out.
Now there’s a guy who could spell his name backwards as a pen name if he ever got into writing: Have you read the latest volume by Sacul Gecre?
everybodys seen Major League, the movie, right? But john Fishers A’s are not gonna be like the team in the movies. The A’s suck, thanks to the super cheap and uncaring owner, He’s gonna get a very friendly deal to come to,Vegas, and in a year or two after moving there, will sell the team for a hefty PROFIT! why would he all of a sudden be willing to pay guys for what theyre worth? aint gonna happen. Im old enough to remember when baseball commishener Bowie Kuhn wouldnt let Charly Finley break up the team because he didnt want to pay the stars, what they were worth. bottom line is, Rob Manfreed is a fluffin puppet for the owners. Integrity of the game? No way! . The bay area could support TWO teams, if one of them wanted to be competitive.