A’s Leadership Needs To Help Lawrence Butler Avoid The “Head Case” Label

First things first, let me say that as a fan Lawrence Butler has been, and is, one of my favorite of the young A’s players, with his charisma, athleticism, and the upside he showed in the second half of 2024.

As an analyst, in 2022-23 when Butler was doing well but not tearing up A+ and AA, I boldly predicted he was going to be a star and then looked like a genius as he took MLB by storm last July-September.

Following a solid start to his 2025 season and then a terrible funk, Butler is back to hitting well and providing a spark more often than not. And yet a problem persists and it is not a small one.

The “bad optics” moments are piling up fast and furious and it does not take long for bad optics to morph into the perception — if not the reality — of “bad attitude”. Butler is a young leader of this A’s core, but the messages he is sending are mixed at best.

They are fixable issues but the A’s coaches, maybe even GM, need to be stepping in now to squash any narrative or perception for Butler’s own good and for the good of the team and organization going forward.

What am I referring to? Here are some examples of a “head case” narrative gestating in front of the eyes of fans and teammates alike:

Hustle

Butler routinely does not run out ground balls he perceives to be easy outs. He did again last night, on a ball that the 2Bman, Corey Lee, unexpectedly bobbled. But instead of having to scramble after it and perhaps not pick the ball up cleanly or make an accurate throw, Lee had plenty of time to calmly recover and throw Butler out by 2 steps.

Jogging out of the box on ground balls or pop ups sends a terrible message. You can’t always hit a line drive or even make contact, but among the things fully in your control are to run hard if you’re running.

I actually wondered last night if Butler might just be “running under control” to protect a minor injury we hadn’t heard about. But then he slapped the double the other way in the 9th and what do you know — he turned on the after burners to beat the throw by an eyelash.

A Fundamental Issue

In RF Butler continues to be a mess of fundamentals. Again fundamentals are the aspect of the game more within a player’s control as they are a matter of discipline and not athletic ability.

We have seen numerous instances where Butler heaved a throw airmailing the cutoff man, giving up several extra bases often on plays he had no chance to make anyway. But additionally, and it surfaced again last night, he has charged a hit trying to start the throw before he fielded the ball only to bobble the ball and have to chase it down.

That Butler has a weak arm for RF is a physical limitation he cannot overcome. His reads and jumps and routes are a work-in-progress and he is also in his first full season with just 225 big league games under his belt.

You can live with those shortcomings and weaknesses. What you can’t — or shouldn’t have to — live with is your young leader, he of the significant contract extension, repeatedly ignoring the fundamental aspects of the game.

This is not complex stuff either: “Field the ball before you think about throwing it, and then try to fire a strike at the chest of the cutoff man. Every time, same routine. No exceptions.”

Head Not In The Game

Butler has never yet been thrown out stealing by a catcher in 25 tries. However, he has now been picked off not once, not twice, but three times this season. Monday’s gaffe was particularly galling because it came in a non base stealing situation: the A’s were trailing 8-4 in the 6th inning and Butler was at 1B with one out.

Whereas the pickoff in Toronto on the last road trip, getting a walking lead and about to steal 3B but he didn’t make the pitcher kick towards home first, came at a time when running made sense and was more or less a failure of execution.

But the pickoff Monday just looked like a lapse in concentration feeding the narrative that Butler’s head is in the game except when it isn’t.

Mr. Mope

In a way you have to like a players who wears his emotions on his sleeve, and you certainly don’t want to suppress who the person is in some artificial way. That being said, we all show up to work sometimes feeling one way but acting another — the “another” being that we act professional and appropriately even when we’re not feeling that way.

Butler’s propensity for moping in his stride and body language when things don’t roll his way, his apparent moodiness from personas of the charismatic leader to the petulant child, are they ideal for a key member of a young core? I’m going to go out on a limb and say maybe not.

In Sum

If it were any one of these issues, that one issue would still be a problem in need of addressing. But when it’s all of these issues, someone needs to sit Mr. Butler down and have that difficult ‘tough love’ conversation that goes, “We love you, and we’re thrilled to have you, and here are a few things that need to change overnight. Now. For your own good and for the good of the team, and it’s not negotiable.”

The problem with this narrative, even if isn’t “who Lawrence Butler really is” is that Butler is writing it. And the A’s are enabling it — it’s time to do some “parenting” while the kid is still young, because to some degree as Butler goes the team will go and neither is showing up right now the way you would want.