Time For A's to Switch Draft Strategies?

The Athletics have been hitting on their recent draft picks, with Jacob Wilson (No. 6 overall, 2023) and Nick Kurtz (No. 4, 2024) being two of the best rookie bats in baseball this season, ranking first and third in wRC+ among first-year players with at least 150 plate appearances. Wilson leads the way with a 138 wRC+ (100 is league average), while Kurtz isn't far behind with a 125.

Kurtz leads AL rookies with 12 homers, while Wilson is second in all of baseball to Aaron Judge for the most hits in 2025, with 108. Beyond those two, No. 1 prospect Gage Jump and No. 6 Tommy White were named to the AL Futures Team on Monday. Both players were selected last year, and Jump has already climbed his way to Double-A Midland, where he's been fairly dominant, posting a 1.91 ERA in eight starts.

It's hard to argue with how things have been going recently with the A's draft plans. It's also worth noting that drafting for need isn't necessarily the best strategy in the MLB Draft. That said, the A's roster is young, and with each passing week there seems to be another position being locked down on the big-league roster for the next few years.

What the A's need more of is pitching depth, and quickly. It's going to be difficult for them to lure big upgrades on the mound through free agency, given how well the Luis Severino signing is working out, and trades could be a bit difficult because their pieces of value right now are fairly integral to the team's success.

Now they do have Jump and Luis Morales, two highly regarded pitching prosepcts in the upper minors, along with potentially Mason Barnett and Kade Morris, but they could use more high-end dart throws.

That would leave the Draft as their best route of acquiring pitching talent. Now, we're not suggesting that the A's go full 2021 Angels and select 20 pitchers, just that they look into the possibility of selecting a college arm with the No. 11 overall pick. College arms tend to move more quickly through the minors, and the A's could use an influx of arms ASAP.

In their most recent mock draft, Baseball America had the A's landing Tyler Bremner out of UC Santa Barbara, noting that the A's seem to be one of the teams that's most heavily "in" on him. They also note that landing with the Athletics at No. 11 would be the higher range of his outcomes, which would mean signing him for under slot and distributing that money a little more later in the draft.

This past season at UC Santa Barbara, Bremner went 5-4 with a 3.49 ERA in 14 starts spanning 77 1/3 innings. In that time, he struck out 111 and walked just 19, good for a strikeout rate of 35.8%, and a walk rate of 6.1%.

Keith Law reported that he touched 97 earlier this season while sitting 93-95, and his changeup is his best pitch. It also sounds like he could be a bit of a work in progress, though he has the tools to be a pretty good pitcher.

The reason that this may be the season that the A's may want to select a pitcher is that they're hoping to ascend to contention before long, and the later they pick in the Draft, the fewer opportunities they'll have to select high-end pitching talent. That said, they have the third-worst record in baseball right now, and will be eligible for a lottery pick again in next year's draft, so it's not their last chance, but hopefully one of them.

The last pitcher the A's took in the first round was left-hander A.J. Puk in 2016 out of Florida. Since 2010, they've only taken three pitchers in the first round, with Puk, Daulton Jefferies (2016, No. 37), and Sonny Gray (2011, No. 18). It should also be noted that both times the A's have selected a pitcher in the last 15 years, they have made it back to the postseason shortly thereafter.

In order for the A's to contend, they'll have to balance the budget during this process as well. While they have a slew of young hitters that are looking like building blocks for the franchise, those bats are going to become more costly in the coming years when they reach arbitration.

It may not be a bad idea to off-set some of those costs by grabbing some low-cost arms in the draft to help maximize their window of contention, whenever it officially opens.