A's Jacob Lopez Developing into Cy Young Contender

Over the offseason, the Athletics made a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays to acquire Jeffrey Springs in an effort to help provide the club an upgrade in the starting rotation, in addition to signing of Luis Severino.

Springs is coming off one of his best outings of the year, going six innings and giving up one hit, a solo home run that broke up his perfect game bid in the bottom of the sixth inning against the Washington Nationals. He struck out five and didn't allow a walk, lowering his ERA on the year to 3.89.

But Springs wasn't the only left-hander the A's acquired in that deal. They also landed Jacob Lopez, who has been in the A's rotation since May 23. As a starter he holds a 3.82 ERA in 13 outings, spanning 61 1/3 innings of work while holding a 1.30 WHIP. Those aren't quite All Star stats, but he could be well on his way to being in that mix as he continues to evolve at the big league level.

Back in June when he was really hitting his stride, Lopez made six starts and went a total of 30 2/3 innings. In that span, he struck out a total of 39 batters. On the season, he holds a 26.3% strikeout rate as a starting pitcher, which ranks him No. 22 among starters with at least 60 innings of work.

While some will take one look at his 90.7 mile per hour fastball and wonder how he's having the success that he is, the left-hander also ranks in the 97th percentile in extension, meaning that he's releasing the ball closer to home plate, and that helps his fastball play up a bit. That also doesn't take into account how much horizontal break the pitch has.

We asked a member of the A's about facing guys with great extension, and they guesstimated that it adds three to four mph to their pitches. The lefty's fastball, slider and changeup all have whiff rates of over 30% this season.

The pitchers at the top of the strikeout list are perennial Cy Young contenders like Logan Gilbert of the Mariners (35.4%), Tarik Skubal in Detroit (34%), and Zack Wheeler of the Phillies (33.5%), but even the guys more in Lopez's range are of that caliber, too, like Cristopher Sánchez (26%) and Logan Webb (26.9%). This isn't to say that Lopez is a surefire Cy Young candidate, but that the makings of his candidacy are certainly present.

The biggest difference between Lopez and some of the other names surrounding him is that the vast majority of those arms limit free passes closer to the 7-8% range. Lopez is at 9.8%, which bleeds into the other factor that he'll need to work on, which is becoming more efficient with his pitches. He typically finishes his outings with between 90-100 pitches, which is standard, but he's also averaging fewer than five innings per start.

In his 13 starts, he has gone 61 1/3 innings, which is 3 2/3 innings fewer than the 65 needed to average five innings. This isn't meant to be a knock on him at all. He's getting his first real taste of the big leagues, and he's thriving when he's on the mound. The hope for the rest of this season and for 2026 will be that he's able to go a little deeper into games. If he does, then he could be one of the top arms not only on the A's staff, but potentially even in all of baseball.

The bright side here is that he's been throwing more strikes this season, sitting at 62% overall compared to 56% in 10 1/3 innings with Tampa last year. Still, he's averaging 18.53 pitches per inning, and getting that in the 15-16 pitch range would get him where he needs to be.

This could be a sequencing issue, where instead of a batter fouling off a couple, he gets them to swing and miss on one for the strikeout, or it could be developing his sinker a bit more, which would induce more ground balls. Lopez is a big fly ball guy, sitting with just a 24.7% ground ball rate.

He introduced a sinker back in June, and has been tossing a few of them per game since. The early results weren't great, and only one has been put in play since the beginning of July, resulting in an out. In his most recent outing against the Arizona Diamondbacks, he threw three and landed two for called strikes while the third was fouled away.

If the sinker gets added to the mix more fully, it could become his ground ball offering that also gets him out of prolonged at-bats, while also giving the hitter yet another pitch to think about, which could also lead to more whiffs. Keep an eye on Jacob Lopez and that sinker the rest of the season.