As you might expect with a team that has hovered around .500 all season, signs point upwards, downwards, and downright sideways, all at the same time, with regard to the 2026 A’s and the rest of the season.
Make no mistake about it, there are positives. The A’s have not hit the way they expected to, but joining the already superb Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers, and Carlos Cortes is the sizzling hot Tyler Soderstrom and Brent Rooker has shown signs of life this week as well. The A’s will ultimately hit. And the emergence of Gage Jump, along with the good arm of Jack Perkins and breakout of JT Ginn, gives the A’s renewed hope around their beleaguered rotation.
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But there are still more questions than answers around the final 95 games as the A’s sit 3.5 back of 1st place and 0.5 game out of a crowded field of wild card mediocrity. Here’s an updated look around the diamond…
Third Base
Leo De Vries looked so good in spring training that it felt realistic to think he might push for a spot on the big league roster as soon as this month. He didn’t miss that fast-track by a hair, he missed it more by a finger. De Vries suffered a bone bruise in his finger that probably explains his big drop in slugging so far in 2026, with an ISO of just .107 compared to the impressive .196 of last season. All his other stats are still looking elite and he’s on his way — but not imminently anymore.
Meanwhile, Zack Gelof has been a revelation, with his .266/.315/.462 batting line pretty close to his enticing rookie season stats (.267/.337/.504) that had him looking like a core piece for years to come. His defense has been the best of any A’s candidate, night and day better than Max Muncy and superior to that of other players, e.g., Darell Hernaiz, trying to play it as their second or third best position.
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So why hasn’t Gelof stabilized 3B going forward? Not because of anything he has done wrong, but because of what Jeff McNeil has done wrong. McNeil went to bed April 30th a wily 34 year old veteran and woke up on May 1st a 54 year old trapped in a horror movie best described as “Freaky Friday meets The 100 Year Old Man”. Point being the A’s might need Gelof to stabilize 2B, where his defense is even better, leaving a hole still at 3B.
As for Muncy, who is being given opportunities again to show he is capable of manning 3B every day, he brings questions on both sides of the ball. He has yet to prove he can play 3B (or 2B) adequately and the bat has not shown up since he was hit on the hand, played through it, rested, rehabbed, and returned to go 1 for 8 — and the one should have been ruled an E6.
Bottom Line: Really you want to put players at their best positions when possible, especially if there is a hole at that position. For Gelof that is 2B, not 3B, so it leaves 3B still highly uncertain given that De Vries is not yet in the picture. It continues to be the place where the A’s should probably focus if they consider a trade or waiver acquisition for the rest of the 2026 season — but they know help is on the way so they would only be looking at a stopgap of an upgrade, which is an unlikely fit. Especially for a team whose focus will be on pitching if it’s on anything.
Second Base:
Once lovingly referred to as Squirrel, then also Graybeard as a tribute to his “mature profile,” lately Jeff McNeil’s nickname has simply been Your Expletive Here. Another possible one would be This ISO Intentionally Left Blank, as McNeil’s last extra base hit came on May 20th and he has had just two since May 3rd.
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It’s hard to overstate how bad McNeil has been the past 6 weeks, as his swings themselves are actually more alarming than the results, which are putrid enough. May’s terrible .216/.278/.284, 54 wRC+ performance has been followed by an even more frightening June: .091/.130/.091, good for the ol’ -44 wRC+. He is now 4 for his last 48 with 4 singles.
Perhaps McNeil’s most recent PA shines a spotlight on just how far the former batting champion has fallen. With the game on the line in the bottom of the 12th, McNeil swung at the first pitch even though it was several inches inside and he could not have possibly done anything with it but pull it weakly foul as he did. Then he took a strike which he challenged even though most of the ball was clearly in the zone. Then he waved late at a pitch up around his neck. It was a PA you couldn’t fathom in April, but have come to expect in June.
If the A’s sit McNeil they solve 2B immediately with Gelof. Only the hole it leaves at 3B, and the “what to do with McNeil?” questions remain — but both are significant queries. So 2B remains as unsettled as 3B unless the A’s can figure out a way to clone Gelof (hey, he does have a brother in the minors…).
Bottom Line: The A’s need to figure out what they do with McNeil and if it’s the Gio Urshela “It’s been fun…” treatment then they have solved 2B with Gelof, but if not most likely we will continue to see some sort of platoon that bounced Gelof around the infield.
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Center Field
This is probably the least unsettled of the 5 in that Henry Bolte is off to a somewhat rollicking start — so long as you don’t look too deep under the hood. Bolte smashed his first HR last night, which is a welcome development, but he also struck out twice to raise his K rate to 31.5%. His BABIP now sits at .440.
Bolte also committed errors in each of the first 2 games of the series, first making an unnecessary throw that skipped past 3B and then getting his footwork a bit tangled as he fanned on a base hit he was charging. Bolte is still only 25 games and 89 PAs into his career, and there are clear signs of success (a .295 BA and .371 OBP) as well as red flags for regression ahead (he has struck out in 14 of his 28 June PAs).
Bolte’s job is safe in that Denzel Clarke is out for a long time and Lawrence Butler is a terrible CFer who also happens to be hitting worse than Clarke offered. But what lies ahead for Bolte, both at the plate and in the field, is anybody’s guess.
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Bottom Line: The A’s will pretty much “sink or swim” with Bolte for the next 2 months. It’s just unclear which it will be.
Starting Pitching
Gage Jump has been sensational and JT Ginn has been a true “breakout SP” — including last night when he was charged with 5 ER in 5.2 IP but in the context of the hitting environment offered the best start of any of the 4 SP in the series so far. Jack Perkins is still an unknown but offers a third “plus arm” the A’s can hope to lean on to create a young “big 3” of sorts.
It’s after that things get even dicier than wishcasting great success on Perkins before he has fully shown it. Jeffrey Springs began the season with an ERA of 1.46 for his first 4 starts and hasn’t won a game since. His season ERA now stands at 4.68 and the dreaded HR ball has shown up 16 times in just 75 IP. He has pitched very much like JP Sears did for the A’s, and while Sears was useful to the A’s he was clearly a “back of the rotation innings eater”. The 5th SP is a revolving door of recently Kade Morris, potentially Joey “You think Springs gives up a lot of HRs?” Estes, and soon the return of Aaron Civale, who out pitched his peripherals for a while and then didn’t.
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It feels like the A’s SP, going forward, could be anything from “surprisingly solid” — like the bullpen was last season following the Mason Miller trade — to “predictably godawful” as you can get when you rely on pitchers who have made 3 big league starts, haven’t been able to stay healthy for a full season, have pitched to poor predictive stats but better results, and so on. It’s a wild card to match the playoff spot the A’s are a half game away from.
Bottom Line: The A’s are going to lean heavily on 3 very inexperienced SPs to lead them into the post-season picture at more than a cursory level.
Bullpen
Oh the bullpen. This is a group that can throw 6.1 IP scoreless innings across 6 different relievers one day and then the very next day turn a comfortable 5-1 7th inning lead into a devastating walk-off loss. After last night, fans are bullish about the prospect of Mason Barnett and Elvis Alvarado blowing away the competition in high leverage, but how many felt this way a week ago?
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Justin Sterner (3.19 ERA with underlying metrics to support his success) has probably been the A’s most consistently effective reliever from day 1 to day 67. Certainly Alvarado has the stuff as he unleashed yesterday. Hogan Harris has a team leading 5 saves but he has also walked 23 in his 32.1 IP. Barnett has been a revelation, but only for 3 appearances so far. Luis Medina has been solid in lower leverage and brings good stuff to go with erratic results throughout his career. The rest of the bullpen crew (Mark Leiter Jr., Scott Barlow, Jose Suarez) are veterans who rely on guile more than plus offerings.
Best case scenario is that a couple arms emerge to give the A’s one thing they have sorely lacked all season: a clear set-up man and a clear closer to build the rest of the pen around. 2 of Alvarado, Sterner, and Barnett could potentially seize these roles, but whether they will is still anybody’s guess.
Bottom Line: “Closer and set-up man by committee” just doesn’t usually work well at all, so look for the A’s to settle on 2 guys soon and then we’ll find out if they made good choices.
A lot of uncertainty, and also a lot of potential and upside, as the A’s spend the next month or so learning whether they are contenders, pretenders, buyers or sellers, in a mediocre AL that is there for the taking — but is also not going to be taken by most of the middling teams. Your thoughts and suggested plans of action moving forward? One thing is clear: it’s not early anymore and the wheat and chaff are about to separate in the American League.
