The A’s have opened extension discussions with outfielder Lawrence Butler, reports Evan Drellich of The Athletic. General manager David Forst confirmed to Drellich that the team is engaged in extension talks with multiple players, though he unsurprisingly didn’t specify which ones.
Butler is a logical target. The 24-year-old had a big season to emerge as a key piece of a developing offensive core. Butler hit .262/.317/.490 with 24 doubles, two triples, and a pair of home runs through 451 plate appearances. He went a perfect 18-18 on stolen base attempts. The positives were almost all concentrated in a monster second half. Butler raked at a .300/.345/.553 clip with 13 homers and 32 extra-base hits after the All-Star Break.
The lefty-swinging Butler had entered the break as a career .205/.260/.337 hitter. He had struck out at close to a 30% clip to that point. He sliced the strikeout rate by nearly 10 percentage points in the second half. By measure of wRC+, Butler was among the ten most productive qualified hitters in the majors during that stretch.
There’s still a relatively small sample of major league success. Butler’s productivity against MLB pitching is essentially limited to three months. An extension would be a bet on the A’s part that the second half represented a legitimate breakout. There’s an argument to wait and see if Butler can maintain that level of production over a full season. At the same time, that’d run the risk of him dramatically raising his earning power with another strong year.
Butler narrowly surpassed one year of major league service. He’s under club control for five seasons and two years from arbitration eligibility. The A’s control him through his age-28 season. There have been a few extensions for hitters in that service range in recent years. Rockies shortstop Ezequiel Tovar inked a seven-year, $63.5MM deal as he entered his age-22 season last spring. Nationals catcher Keibert Ruiz signed for eight years and $50MM as a 24-year-old two seasons ago. The Pirates inked third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes to an eight-year, $70MM extension coming out of the 2022 lockout.
Those players all play more impactful positions. Tovar and Hayes were plus defenders on the left side of the infield. Ruiz is a catcher. Butler played some center field as a rookie, but he’s stretched at the position. The A’s kept him in right field last season. He posted average defensive marks in just under 1000 innings in the corner. Butler has demonstrated offensive upside beyond what anyone from the Tovar, Hayes or Ruiz group had shown at the time of their deals, however. His camp could aim for something approaching the Tovar/Hayes guarantees, though it remains to be seen if the A’s would make that kind of investment without a larger body of work.
The A’s have historically shied away from early-career extensions. As shown on MLBTR’s contract tracker, they haven’t extended a pre-arbitration player since inking Sean Doolittle to a $10MM guarantee more than a decade ago. This offseason has been a huge exception to their typical operating procedure. They signed Luis Severino to a three-year, $67MM free agent deal that represents the largest investment in franchise history. They followed by signing Brent Rooker to a five-year, $60MM extension as his arbitration window was opening.
The club also acquired Jeffrey Springs in a trade with Tampa Bay, assuming the remaining two years and $21.75MM on his deal. They dropped $10MM to bring in setup man José Leclerc via free agency. The A’s were reportedly targeting a competitive balance tax number of at least $105MM to ensure they didn’t forfeit their status as revenue sharing recipients. RosterResource estimates their CBT number around $107MM, so they’ve hit that mark, but it seems there’s still payroll space.
Rooker, Severino and Springs are the only players signed beyond this season. Rooker is the only player locked into the 2027 roster. The A’s hold a club option on Springs, while Severino has an opt-out during the 2026-27 offseason. There’s plenty of long-term flexibility, raising the possibility of extending multiple young players. Beyond Butler, catcher Shea Langeliers, shortstop Jacob Wilson, and center fielder JJ Bleday stand out as speculative extension candidates.
The A’s will be an interesting team to watch in 2025. Could surprise more than some suspect, although difficult to assess how their team will translate to Sacramento. Could be tough going for pitching, but great for their hitters like Butler.
The problem with Sacramento is it’s over 100 degrees for a LOT of the summer. Sounds brutal to play 81 games there.
The Rangers did this for decades in humidity.
Hear me out:
What if there was a massive river delta collecting a watershed larger than a bunch of East Coast states that was near Sacramento … /S
CCTL- Capital idea, Holmes!
Well, at least they’ll be moving to cool and frosty Las Vegas after their time in Sacramento.
(Seriously, Las Vegas is the first place I’ve lived where, when someone says the temperature is in the teens, they don’t mean it’s cold outside).
A pair of homeruns? Let’s add 20 to that.
and two 3 home run games as well!
The way Anthony wrote this was confusing. He wrote “through 451 plate appearances” Butler had “a pair of home runs”.
He goes on to say most of Butler’s production was in the 2nd half. He then cites Butler’s slash line for the 2nd half of the season.
I had to re-read carefully before I caught it. I was thinking to myself there was no way 2 home runs was accurate. Butler was on fire during the 2nd half,he was crushing it.
But if you look at baseball reference, he had 451 plate appearances all year….so yeah.
Was just thinking that same thing
Big pop in that bat once he learns to harness it. It would be nice to see a real extension and not just a buyout of an arbitration year or two
Extend him
Law Dawg turned it on when he got called back up, i dont know if they worked out his swing or what but he was a huge part of the team. The A’s have a really good team when everyone is clicking.
and a pair of home runs through 451 plate appearances.
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Sometimes things should just feel funny when you are typing them. Admittedly, I ranked Butler higher than most in my drafts, so I knew he might be close to 30/30 this year.
But the whole point of writing an extension article would be to highlight his highlights. When you typed “a pair of HRs” you should’ve thought “why would they extend someone with only 2 HRs?”.
Lawrence is truly special – only he can hit a pair of homers on the season as well as 13 after the break!
He had a monster half season. I am a big Butler fan but I was also a big Dan Johnson fan. And a big Travis Buck fan. And a big Adam Piatt fan. Even I question this move. A player’s career can go south in a hurry.
Don’t forget Jack Cust.
None of them could 1-stay healthy and 2-none of them put up a half season even close to what Butler did last year…
The A’s are not spending close to the money the Yankees did with the minor league ballpark the Rays are now playing at. Sutter field is not a major league caliber park and it won’t be. The players union has already complained about this. The A’s might win 90 games if the Astros or Rangers have a underachieving or injury plagued season. If the A’s struggle expect a fire sale at the trade deadline. Remember they didn’t have one last year because of the low payroll. Since Fisher had to spend money he is likely to shed payroll if they struggle. The league set a minimum spending level for revenue sharing teams.
It should be a surprisingly tight AL West this year. I think the A’s could potentially be a WC team.
Hot take: A’s win division in 2025.
Hot take: A’s win division in 2025.
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The long-suffering Sacramento fans deserve a WS.
Bro you are behind time lmao the A’s fire sale already happened in 2022-2023. Welcome to a new A’s era.
he also liked his own comment..
Oakla- I mean, Veg- I mean, Sacramento spending money? Hell has frozen over.
Being forced to spend money nilly-willy to avoid losing revenue sharing profits is still scummy
Hayes and Ruiz aren’t exactly what you’d hope for when signing a young guy long term. I like Butler but I would wait, there’s very little risk in letting him play for another year or two before you do something like that. It wouldn’t be a huge difference in salary and the Nats and Pirates are basically tied to those guys because of the extensions and would probably like to upgrade from them.
Butter is a fun watch and a possible All-star but something about him makes me pause on an extension. Maybe wait a season.
I swear so many of these typos could be fixed with a single readthrough
This is MLBTR, not English Punctuation 101. Lay off omg……
Bill the Cat
This is MLBTR, not English Punctuation 101.
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Saying a player has a pair of HRs has nothing to do with punctuation whatsoever. It isn’t like a typo where he typed ‘2’ instead of ’22’. He went to the trouble of typing out ‘a pair of’.
That should’ve been noticeable.
Why are you here? Baseball or typo editor lol?
@billcat Since these are professional writers, I do expect to see an article that doesn’t have me shaking my head asking how they didn’t catch such simple mistakes. Don’t think that’s too much to ask
Watch the A’s go win a World Series in Sacramento now. The last game in Oakland felt beyond sad being there.