The Oakland A’s Could Lose A Year Of Their Contention Window Without Ever Playing A Game

Major League Baseball and the player’s union reached an agreement on Thursday, March 26 that covers how salaries and contracts will be treated in the event of a shortened or cancelled 2020 season. As the United States becomes the world leader in confirmed coronavirus cases, we have to countenance the possibility of there being no baseball in 2020. Among the parameters in the agreement, players would still accrue a year of service time, on signed contracts, arbitration and pre-arbitration deals. While there’s a lot to dislike about the deal, ticking the service clock one year forward, regardless of how much baseball is played, is the right thing to do. It also could spell trouble for the Oakland A’s.

For years, the A’s have leveraged baseball’s contract structures to get impact talent on the cheap. For a player’s first three years at the Major League level, they work for the league minimum. After that, arbitration kicks in for another three seasons, which can occasionally favor the player, but more often favors the team, compared to what a player would earn on the open market. It is only after those six years are completed that a player can become a free agent and be guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars with a single signature. As the sport starts to favor younger athletes more and more, the earlier parts of a player’s career become a bigger and bigger bargain for the team. That’s why the A’s foundation is built around such players, with the occasional veteran free agent filling in a gap, but almost never playing a central role.

Last season, the A’s paid a total of $7 million for Matt Chapman, Matt Olson and Marcus Semien, while netting 17.6 wins above replacement from that trio. That allowed the A’s to fill out a team of cheap but useful players around them on the way to another 97-win season. After 2020, Olson and Chapman will start making seven figures, and their salaries will escalate each year, and Semien, barring an extension, will be a free agent. So will closer Liam Hendriks and pitchers Mike Fiers, Joakim Soria and Yusmeiro Petit. The A’s can find suitable replacements for some of those players, but not for Semien, who placed third in the 2019 A.L. MVP voting and deservedly so. Hendriks, one of 2019’s most valuable relievers, will be similarly difficult to replicate. In another year, Chapman and Olson will start to get expensive, at least by Oakland’s standards.

That doesn’t mean they can’t compete. The core of the team is still strong, and Jesus Luzardo and A.J. Puk can lead the rotation at league-minimum salaries for a few years. But 2020 is a year when the A’s had their entire formula working, as far as roster construction goes, and they may lose it to a pandemic that has not yet reached its apex.

Consider this one more reason to wash your hands, don’t touch your face and keep your distance.