Eyeball Scout Assesses The “Suddenly Competent” A’s

Was the 1-6 start the fluke? Or is the more recent 5-1 surge for real? Or is the truth, as is so often is, somewhere in between?

We’ll go with “in between” if only because historically very few teams play .143 or .833 ball for too long. The question in front of us is really whether the 2024 A’s are improved enough to avoid 100 losses, a benchmark they missed by a whopping 13 games last year.

Here’s what the Eyeball Scout is seeing from some key A’s players so far...

Paul Blackburn

While the odds of finishing the season with a 0.00 ERA are slim, Blackburn’s success is real. His cutter just looks like it has different action, with that late fold that gets under a batter’s swing. It is a genuine “swing and miss” pitch in the strike zone, where Blackburn has had particular success at the top of the zone.

The curve has always been excellent, and so far Blackburn’s overall command has been exquisite. He still has relatively little margin for error on location, but with the Duchscherer-esque cutter playing off his fastball, slider, curve and changeup, suddenly the A’s de facto ace is profiling more like Kyle Hendricks (career 3.56 ERA, 24.8 WAR) than the endless list of back end journey SPs whose stats Blackburn has been imitating.

I’ve never seen Blackburn as being more than a solid innings eating #4 SP, even in his 2022 All-Star season (when he ran out of gas and still finished with an ERA over 4.00). But now, for the very first time, I view him as “legit” and think he is poised to have an actual All-Star type season if his health holds up.

Lawrence Butler

He of the terrible stats but excellent peripherals: even after last night’s game the surface stats sit at just .179/.304/.308, yet he leads the team in average exit velocity, his 15.2% BB rate is elite, and his xwOBA sits at .363 suggesting a lifetime’s worth of bad luck over a 2 week stretch.

I still have concerns about Butler’s swing, as he has a lot of swing and miss in his game right now on fastballs in the zone owing to what looks to me like a long swing through the zone. Also, I perceive a slight bailing out on swings maybe the result of not keeping the front shoulder closed — even on his game winning hit, it blooped off the end of the bat because Butler’s hands, and with it the bat, were pulling slightly off the pitch.

Luckily, these are potentially fixable issues as they are mechanical and not based in approach or innate skill. Butler has a ton of athletic ability, and reputedly the maturity to embrace coaching, make necessary adjustments, and improve.

So I am cautiously optimistic about a player I have long been touting as a future fixture. But I don’t think it’s quite as simple as waiting for bad luck to turn into success. I think there are actual fixes needed in the swing in order to stay ahead of the competition.

That being said, maybe the luck itself began to turn last night when for all the hard hit outs he has endured lately, Butler got a dying quail bloop to fall at a crucial time. Here’s hoping it’s the start of something great.

Shea Langeliers

There has never been any question about Langeliers’ power or his throwing arm. When he hits the ball he hits it hard and far, and when he throws the ball he makes base stealers weep.

The biggest issue for Langeliers has always been making enough contact, and this traces to a couple fatal flaws: the ability to catch up to a high fastball and the recognition to lay off a chase slider.

On these fronts I have been very encouraged by Langeliers so far. He has spit on a few vintage “chase sliders” and you can ask Jose LeClerc how the high fastball is going. The batting average looks puny at .205 but it is the combination of some truly bad luck on well hit balls and the small sample that pushes stats to the extremes early on.

Like Butler, Langeliers shows a big discrepancy between his wOBA (.327) and his xwOBA (389), meaning he has been average but without the luck factor you would expect him to be excellent.

I think this is the result of actual improvements in his batting game and so we should see those stats creep up. Meanwhile, perhaps it’s defensively that Shea has shows the most impressive growth, first in his framing (from worst to good) and in his “pop time” (#1 in MLB).

All told, the 2024 version of Langeliers is looking like the #1 draft pick the A’s were seeking to acquire when they used Matt Olson as bait. We will see if Langeliers continues to master the high heat and can lay off the wide junk, but color me impressed and excited so far.

Overall, that’s a pretty rosy report on a team hopefully on the rise. I will add that I’m still not sold on JJ Bleday and I think Joe Boyle will have a hard time making a living dancing through so many raindrops without a clear plan for how to throw strikes on command. But I am feeling good about these 3 and ask: do you feel the same way? Or is the Eyeball Scout no wiser than the average scout who gets it right 20% of the time and earns a raise?

A’s and Nats at 1:05pm, weather permitting. Here’s to strikes from Boyle, rockets from Lawrence and Shea, and no one tearing up their knee on the wet turf.