The Athletics’ Rebuild Was A Dud; They’re Winning Anyway

From 2018-21, only four teams in Major League Baseball won more games than the A’s. They’d navigated a lean stretch from 2015-17 that saw them rattle off three consecutive last-place finishes in the AL West and come out on the other side with a swiftly acquired/developed core. Matt Olson, Matt Chapman and Sean Murphy were top-100 draft picks. Sean Manaea, Chris Bassitt and Frankie Montas were key pieces in the returns received for Ben Zobrist, Jeff Samardzija and Josh Reddick/Rich Hill, respectively. Mark Canha was added via the Rule 5 Draft (technically in a trade with the Rockies). Ramon Laureano was acquired from the division-rival Astros for a song.

The staying power of that core, as is ever the case with the low-budget A’s, was finite. In early September 2021 — much to the chagrin of some A’s fans; my apologies — MLBTR looked ahead to the massive slate of arbitration salaries facing the then-Oakland club and wondered whether another broad-reaching teardown was nigh, given the escalating cost of that core.

That rebuild indeed came to pass. Over the next calendar year, each of Olson, Chapman, Manaea, Bassitt, Montas and Lou Trivino were traded for prospects. The following offseason, Murphy, A.J. Puk and Cole Irvin followed. Canha, just like Marcus Semien and Liam Hendriks a year prior, departed for no compensation. Sam Moll went at the 2023 trade deadline.

The plus side seemed to be a bevy of new prospects who could potentially accelerate the rebuild process and help get a contending group back on the field sooner than later. If you’d told A’s fans on Opening Day 2022, after that miserable offseason rebuild, that the 2025 club would be an on-the-rise team with an exciting core of hitters, they’d likely have begrudgingly accepted that another rebuild paid dividends.

Except … that’s not really the case. It’s true that the A’s are winning in 2025 and look more exciting than they have in four years — but they’ve reached this point not because of that rebuild but rather in spite of it. Let’s take a look back at the rebuild, the missteps along the way, and the manner in which this nucleus came together despite a series of whiffs on the trade market.