2:37pm: Oakland officially announced Aguilar’s DFA and Blackburn’s activation from the IL. They also recalled infielder Jonah Bride from Triple-A Las Vegas and optioned reliever Garrett Acton. (Bride’s promotion was first reported by Martín Gallegos of MLB.com.) The 40-man roster tally drops to 39.
10:04am: The A’s are designating first baseman Jesús Aguilar for assignment, reports Daniel Álvarez-Montes of El ExtraBase (Twitter link). The team has not yet announced the move, though it’ll free an active roster spot for right-hander Paul Blackburn once made official. Blackburn is expected to be reinstated from the 15-day injured list to make his season debut tonight against the Braves.
Aguilar’s time in Oakland will prove relatively brief. The A’s signed the right-handed hitter to a $3MM free agent deal at the end of January. It was a buy-low flier on a former All-Star and 35-homer bat who’d had a down 2022 campaign. Aguilar had slumped to a .235/.281/.379 showing in 129 games last season. Towards the end of the year, he was DFA by the Marlins but caught on with the Orioles as part of the September roster expansion.
The Venezuela native didn’t hit well at either spot. Those offensive struggles continued in green and gold. Aguilar has tallied 115 plate appearances over 36 games with the A’s. He’s slumped to a .221/.281/.385 batting line. He has just five home runs and a personal-low 29.3% hard contact rate. His strikeout percentage has jumped a couple points from last year’s 23.5% clip, as he’s gone down on strikes 27% of the time.
Going back to the start of the 2022 campaign, Aguilar carries a .232/.281/.380 slash over 622 trips to the plate. For a player who doesn’t offer much defensive or baserunning value, that production hasn’t been sufficient to hang onto a roster spot. Aguilar was a slightly above-average hitter two seasons back, when he connected on 22 homers with a .261/.329/.459 showing for Miami. He’s now five seasons removed from his aforementioned All-Star showing, when he put up an excellent .274/.352/.539 line for the 2018 Brewers.
Aguilar is still due around $2MM through season’s end. It’s unlikely another team will pick up that tab given his continued struggles. While the A’s have a week to explore trade possibilities, it’s probable Aguilar will return to free agency in the coming days. That could come via release or rejection of an outright assignment in favor of free agency. Aguilar has well over five years of MLB service and can therefore decline a minor league assignment while collecting his entire salary.
The A’s have used the lefty-swinging Ryan Noda as part of a first base platoon with Aguilar of late. A Rule 5 draftee from the Dodgers’ system, Noda has impressed with a .241/.400/.451 showing through his first 50 MLB games. Oakland could give him a few more reps against southpaws, gauging whether he can be more than a platoon bat moving forward. If skipper Mark Kotsay wants to keep Noda in a more sheltered role, Brent Rooker or Aledmys Díaz could pick up a few first base reps against left-handed pitching.
Aguilar’s signed for three millions $. He will go unclaimed so that the A’s pay his money. Not sure what will be next for Jesus…
He’ll probably have three choices, Mexico, Asia, or retirement. I guess someone could be looking for a veteran bench bat, but I think there are better options out there.
A’s Gm once again proves why he is the worst GM in MLB. There was 0 reason to sign a player to a $3 M deal who was released last year. A’s going for the record worse team ever should man the entire front office gets fired but they will not.
Not sure how anyone can run both “the A’s dont spend” and “the A’s GM is bad” narratives after this year, they DO spend, its just ALWAYS on the worst possible players, because Fisher is deliberately trying to lose. MLB should honestly force Fisher to spend or kick the franchise out of MLB and replace it with a new one that operates like a proper MLB team.
They sign bad players and trade good talent for nothing, tough to say the GM is any good. They consistently draft and trade for low ceiling prospects. Yes the owner is still cheap but guys like Chapman, Olsen, Murphy, Bassitt, Montas, etc were pretty good and they got nothing but a fringe starting catcher and roster filler back. That’s unacceptable. Trading Murphy for Nootbar straight up would have probably been the smartest move they could have made.
That is his problem he always trade for quantity not quality.
With prospects, most of the time it is better to go for quantity. You have a better chance of one or two emerging instead of putting all your eggs into one basket. Not all of them will work out obviously, but if you can get 1-2 good players it is usually better. The A’s have just had very bad luck recently.
Beane also incorrectly took Sean Nolin and Kendall Graveman instead of Marcus Stroman, so “quantity over quality” isnt always the best move.
He could resurrect his career with another team and lead them to the promised land
Sorry, it is Memorial Day, not Easter.
The A’s got rid of all their Joshua’s—Donaldson, Reddick, and Harrison. They are not going to make it to the promised land.
WWJD?
Nah, the Padres will claim him to play catcher.
When you get DFA’d by the A’s it’s time to head overseas or to the couch.
With $3 million and the summer off, I’m headed to Cabo San Lucas.
That too
I get it from the A’s standpoint. It’s a bad look to have anyone who’s ever had any talent on this years team. Doesn’t fit the vibe.
But not Fujinami?
A completely unnecessary signing even at the time. They’d already gotten Noda (so see what they’d have in him), and if he fell through, they could use whichever of Diaz/Peterson isn’t playing 3B to play at 1B instead or see if whatever fringe guy they had at AAA could hack it instead. No one to blame but themselves here.
He’s certainly not an everyday player anymore, but a contender could have looked to him if they needed help facing left handed pitching… .280/.362/.520 in 50 AB is more than servicable
“Pads should pick him up!”
– Johnny Hustle
I don’t think that Auguilar would play with Machado after he deliberately spiked him at first when he was with Milwaukee. You know one of many of his dirty plays
Welcome to Pittsburgh.
They went from having no first basemen last October, to too many after signing Choi and Santana, to again having no first basemen. This of course, unless you count Joe, who seems utterly incapable of picking a ball out of the dirt
So this guy, Hosmer…yeah, the kind of hitter as of late who’ll fit right into the offensive anemia here
Yep so much trash they can pickup at a position of need. Cherington licking his lips
Did Kendrys Morales suddenly become available?
The A’s should DFA everybody over the age of 30.
I doubt they have many over the age of 30 since they would have to pay someone with experience.
I wonder sometimes if the Reds GM and the A’s GM are the same guy. Has anyone seen them in the same room at the GM meetings?
Trevor May, Austin Pruitt, Carlos Perez, Aledmys Diaz, Tony Kemp, Jace Peterson, Seth Brown…
All those guys are over 30. That would pretty much gut the infield.
They aee definitely not the same guy then because the A’s at least signed some competent MAJOR LEAGUE talent.
“gut the infield” but the young players are way better and the A’s are blocking them with worthless veterans. Give us Harris-Allen-Gelof-Noda/Soderstrom/Langeliers as the INF/C mix for the rest of the year.
No reason to start the service clock on all their top prospects. Let them stay in AAA and call them up when they rebrand and move to Vegas as the Hookers & Blow.
Uhh this is a rebuilding team, service clocks dont matter at all at this stage.
@Reds
Difference is, the Reds seem to be moving forward.
Reds actually have good young players and know how to develop. Not sure why people act like they’re the dregs of the league after a bad season where they had to spend less after having a decent team for a bit.
the reds have had two above .500 seasons in the last 10 years. 2021 and shortened 2020 season. So I guess technically you can say they’ve been ok recently
DFA’d by the worst team in MLB history.
I think this particular roster move means Söderström is coming.
Hello Mariners!! Cut Pollock pick up Aguilar we need more right handed power and a backup 1B get him for minimum salary if he doesn’t work out cut him loose no harm…
The signings of Aguilar, Diaz, Kemp and Petersen were part of the plan to tank and make fans ok with the move to Vegas.
The daily playing of that group has defied all reason and still defies reason as the others in the list remain in the lineup.
Kotsay is part of the problem.
Its like they are doing a reality show of the movie major Leagues. The A’s are the indians only difference is they have 0 chance to win.
And they don’t have the hot owner.
I am more disturbed on MLB and the other owners don’t see Fisher is making a mockery of baseball. Do any of these owners have the guts to stand up and say sell the team for the love of baseball.
Yes, the even worse part about this is that the rest of the owners arent openly plotting against Fisher and talking trash in public. Other team owners love winning though, and the free wins Oakland are giving other teams all year are gunna shut them up.
Fisher is costing them money because why show up in their park to a boring non-competitive game?
I think most fans would be happy to show up and watch their home team win 8-1.
No one wants to go to the coliseum if the team is competitive either…….
Not true. They grew big crowds before selling the team off to grifters that only care about low payroll and high profits.
Yeah, in fantasy baseball I choose the pitcher for the team facing the A’s and Royals. More often than not (no matter who they are) they turn in decent results.
Yup, Kotsay has no business managing a MLB team and even if he had a good roster he’d still be bad.
Sounds to me he has thrown in the towel already and just going through the motions.
He’s never managed a team before, he doesn’t know what he’s doing at all.
but he comes cheap. A’s only care about profits.
Look at the lineup Kotsay is putting out there today vs the Braves. What a joke.
Aledmys Diaz, SS, batting cleanup. Why. TF why???
.521 OPS
Blocking Nick Allen at SS, who’s defense is 1000x better.
Then of course Kotsay puts AAAA scrub Jonah Bride AND Jace Peterson in the lineup. Disgusting. Kotsay makes the worst lineups and bullpen choices, he should be better than this.
They will be breaking the record for most loses in a season. MLB is silent on the bad product they put out there.
Hinch keeps batting Maton 5th when he’s hitting .167 as a platoon player. Kotsay is not alone.
This article isn’t exactly correct, because you must have 13 hitters on your 26 man roster. DFA-ing Aguilar and reinstating Blackburn makes it 12 hitters. So there has to be another move coming. This is what happens when writers blindly pick up someone else’s tweet without using their brains.
That’s why I indicated that Söderström is probably going to be called up. It would not surprise me to see him in the lineup tonight against the Braves.
Soderstrom coming up would be awesome, but the A’s might be making Noda the everyday 1B.
Söderström has been the primary catcher at Vegas this season. That tells me that the Oakland organization isn’t convinced Langoliers is the real deal.
Soderstrom has played 17 games at 1B and 22 at C so far this year. That tells me the plan is to play Soderstrom everyday at 1B, then he plays at C when Langeliers needs a day off. Langeliers is way better defensively than Soderstrom, but Soderstrom isn’t bad. Susac is better defensively than both and will likely take over if his bat arrives. Noda being a good 1B complicates Soderstrom’s arrival.
Defensive metrics for catchers don’t take into account having nothing but AAAA scrub pitchers throwing at you all year. Langeliers is better defensively than these numbers, he’s decent back there, and the A’s were a playoff team with Vogt, who was the worst catcher of all time. Langeliers is several tiers above Vogt already and he’s a young rookie. Langeliers bat is looking MLB-qaulity, unlike Peterson, Kemp and Aledmys, who all need to be be DFA’d immediately after Aguilar.
I was wrong, they recalled Jonah bride.
Left at the altar.
That’s no way to groom Bride.
Pretty obvious they were signing players this off-season just to appease mlb and other owners that they aren’t pocketing the revenue sharing. Otherwise never made sense to spend money on diaz, May Aguilar, peterson, etc.
This year really did turn into Major League the movie, but in the worst, most realistic way (they go 10-50 and the rich kids get their own way yet again despite ruining everything for everyone else).
277lbs? He looks out of shape.
That’s under-stated.
He’s closer to 300.
Still better than Abreu
He should head to Japan and become the new Tuffy Rhodes.
Great! Now do Peterson, A. Diaz, Kemp & Laureano
Laureano still has value on Defense though.
His WaR is still close to 1 despite his slump with the Bat.
Agreed, Laureano should be traded, the rest should be DFA’d.
A return to Cleveland would make sense if the Guardians want to consider Josh Naylor in the OF again (they probably don’t). Maybe a return to Milwaukee where he could actually hit. Voit and Ruf have done little so far for the Brewers.
This wouldn’t even be a thought for CLE if they didn’t already have their own FA bust in Josh Bell. This guy has become the king of little dribblers to the right side.
Unleash the Noda!
Aguilar stat wise .221 AVG 5HR – is not that bad considering rest of the A’s team batting
Question: Where will MLB make Oakland play home games next year? Buy out the lease in Oakland and move for a couple or 3 years somewhere else. The city selected can use it as a tryout for future expansion or transfer of another team. You cannot stay in Oakland if Vegas is in 2027!
I still remember the good teammate Jesus was in Milwaukee. Good luck! I think your mental health just improved..
I Guess money ball is dead
Author notes Aguilar was an “above average hitter” in Miami. Which was what brother Doobies been saying for ages on stages: “Jesus is just all right, all right