Katie Woo and Will Sammon of The Athletic wrote this week that the A’s were interested in expansion talks with other players. General manager David Forst confirmed this during yesterday’s press conference and revealed without further details that the team has opened some discussions.
“The idea of taking this group of young players and locking them in a new stadium is something we’ve been talking about for a long time,” Forst said (link via Mark Anderson of Associated Press). “We were able to sign Brent Rooker and Lawrence Butler last year, Tyler now, and there are ongoing conversations with others. So this is kind of a blueprint for how we want to do this and how we want to open the ballpark in ’28.”
While Forst didn’t identify which players the A’s were trying to expand, there are a few obvious targets. Shea Langeliers is entitled to arbitration for three seasons. Respective Rookie of the Year winner and runner-up Nick Kurtz And Jacob Wilson have five years of club control. Langeliers is one of the best offensive catchers in the MLB. Kurtz and Wilson look like franchise cornerstones at first base and shortstop, respectively.
MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects Langeliers at a salary of $5.1 million. His energy production should pay off well in the arbitration process, and he would earn between $20 million and $25 million over the next three years if he continues at his recent pace. Langeliers will be monitored throughout his age-30 season. Sean Murphy (six years, $73 million) and Cal Raleigh (five years, $99.4 million) have signed recent extensions in the same class of service.
Langeliers wouldn’t be able to match Raleigh even if that deal was signed before the Seattle Backstop’s record 2025 season. However, his camp could beat the Murphy contract. The former Athletic was a superior defender but fell short of Langeliers’ power ceiling. Murphy accordingly assumed a lower expected base in arbitration than Langeliers will be.
Expanding Wilson and certainly making a run at Kurtz would require new franchise records. Wilson is well above the $65 million range Ezequiel Tovar and Butler signed with one-plus years of service. He doesn’t have the same power potential as him Jackson Merrill And Roman Anthony showed it capping early career deals of at least $130 million. That said, he is a defenseman with a high level of contact ability who was 21 percentage points better than a league average hitter in his first full season. He’s arguably closer to Merrill/Anthony than Soderstrom, and a nine-figure asking price wouldn’t be outlandish.
Kurtz would be the hardest of the group to lock down. On a rate basis only Aaron Judge And Shohei Ohtani were better hitters this year. Kurtz has already collected a $7 million signing bonus from the draft and collected nearly $1.3 million from the pre-arbitration bonus. He is also a client of Excel Sports Management, an agency that has virtually no history of signing extensions prior to arbitration. It would likely require the A’s to offer more than double Soderstrom’s contract just to get talks going if they want to buy out multiple free agent years.
The A’s expansion candidates besides that trio would all be much cheaper but entirely speculative flyers. Defensive, tough midfielder Denzel Clarke and young starter Luis Morales showed promise, but has very limited resumes in the big league. None of their top prospects: infielder Leo De Vries nor left-handed people Gage jumped And Jamie Arnold – have even reached Triple-A, and there has never been a pre-debut extension for a pitcher.
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