Tyler Soderstrom is going big with a seven-year extension

It’s not just the park. The A’s put on a power show in 2025, smashing 219 home runs and posting results across the lineup. Nick Kurtz led the way with a superlative rookie season, but he wasn’t alone; Brent Rooker 30 bombs shot off, Laurens Butler added 21 of his own, and Tyler Soderstrom split the difference by 25. Rooker and Butler signed extensions before the season. Kurtz will be there forever. Add Soderstrom to that group: Over the holidays, he and the A’s agreed to a seven-year, $86 million contract extension, as Jeff Passan first reported.

Soderstrom’s route to stardom is emblematic of this A’s team. He’s always hit well, but figuring out how to incorporate him into the lineup hasn’t been easy. Three years ago he was in the top 25 in the world as a catcher. Huge, easy power combined with the ability to play the toughest position on the diamond were the selling points. But as he worked his way through the upper minors and debuted in Oakland, a glaring weakness emerged: Soderstrom couldn’t actually catch very well, and Shea Langeliersanother appealing prospect, posed an obstacle to daily playtime behind the dish. After throwing 123.2 big league innings that were both statistically and aesthetically ugly enough for the team to pull the plug, Soderstrom was left looking for a position.

In 2024, an early-season minor league stint to work on his defense, combined with a midseason injury, left Soderstrom barely playing first base, the new position the A’s selected for him. But between drafting Kurtz and making Rooker a full-time DH, that position didn’t promise much long-term stability. Soderstrom entered 2025 trying to learn left field while also trying to improve a lackluster batting line in his career. A former catcher who plays the outfield and might not even hit well? His career was certainly on thin ice.

But Soderstrom’s talent manifested itself almost immediately. He powered his way through March and April with a 147 wRC+, launching home runs into every corner of the stadium with crushing force. Despite a crush on outfielders, the A’s made Soderstrom an everyday option in left so they could call on Kurtz at first base. He ran with the track; at the end of the year, his 125 wRC+ made him one of the better hitters on one of the better offensive teams in baseball.

That brings us to the present and the contract extension. Soderstrom’s career trajectory has changed dramatically over the past twelve months. A full season of good offensive production at age 23 makes ZiPS dream… well, maybe not bigbut perhaps it is a dream medium:

Those offensive numbers are pretty good for someone who had a career wRC+ of 83 in 2025, and who had a 102 wRC+ in his last thousand minor league appearances. But projection systems love the rapid improvement and plus-plate discipline Soderstrom displayed in his breakout year. ZiPS is only 24 years old and will also see some age-related improvement in the coming years. In total, the system would offer him $64 million for seven years, or $77 million if we include the eighth option year.

Why are the key WAR projections lackluster despite solid offensive numbers? Because ZiPS doesn’t think Soderstrom’s defense is good enough for prime time. Take 2026, for example. Logging about 550 plate appearances with an above-average offense is a strong baseline. To turn that into 1.0 WAR, you have to be a terrible defender – we’re talking somewhere around -15 runs from Def – but the model just doesn’t buy into his good 2025 numbers in left field.

If you think he’s a good defenseman, maybe a left fielder, that’s somewhere between a half win and a win with improvement each year. I’m in that camp, although I completely understand why the model isn’t. It works on historical parallels, and catchers who initially move to first base are generally not elite defenders in the outfield. They are generally not defenders in the field at all; the margins of error are certainly quite wide there.

Beyond the details of difficult defensive projections, you can see what the Athletics were thinking when making this deal. Soderstrom will be a valuable offensive contributor for years to come, and he will be a valuable offensive contributor in a way that tends to be well compensated by the arbitration process – dingers pay basically. The A’s have now extended the number of years in which they will run that valuable offense, while also locking in a competitive rate — assuming ZiPS is close, but a bit naive about its defense.

That may sound boring, but it’s something good teams do. Sign a bunch of young players to contract extensions, and you’ve greatly increased your chances of ending up with a star player who will stick around for a while. These projections are just center points. Some of the time, the future Soderstrom will continue to develop into a mid-range bopper and leave those numbers in the dust. At some other, unknowable stretch of time, he’ll regress to mediocrity, with 2025 being his career-best production.

Even if that’s symmetrically distributed around its center projections, the A’s get a lot of benefit from that sound. The kind of player Soderstrom could develop into, his top performer? You can’t find those guys easily, and especially not without giving up a ton of prospect capital or cash.

Importantly for the team, Soderstrom’s mid-level results are helpful to them as well. One of their biggest problems in recent years has been depth; some very bad players have racked up playing time for the A’s as they bounced from Oakland to Sacramento and suffered through the depths of a rebuild. Even in 2025, the team’s best iteration since 2021, they gave a lot of at-bats, 2,249 to be exact, to hitters who didn’t even reach a 95 wRC+ (a number I set to exclude Butler from a list of infamy).

The more guys like Soderstrom the team can keep, the less likely this problem will persist for years to come. With Soderstrom, Rooker, Butler and Kurtz now all mainstays in the lineup for the foreseeable future, the floor is higher than it used to be. Add in Langeliers, who will be around for three more years, and that’s five positions where the A’s have good offensive options. I’m a little less optimistic about it Jacob Wilson than consensus, but he’s no slouch either. Jeff McNeil will add to that floor in 2026 (it will probably be gone after that). Denzel Clarke can’t hit, but its elite defense provides its own baseline.

Would Soderstrom still be around in 2026 even without this deal? Naturally. But this general idea – raising the floor by bringing in young contributors – is solid, and even more important for roving athletics. Whatever they say publicly, their attention is certainly focused on 2028, the first year they will play in Las Vegas. Heck, general manager David Forst also said this at the press conference following this signingwhich even kept the team in Vegas to drive home the point.

With the exception of McNeil, every Athletic I mentioned in this article will still be under contract in 2028. That’s a broad base of offensive competency, which the team can supplement with outside additions or minor league promotions as they see how the rest of the roster develops. It also frees up resources to add pitching, a notable team weakness in recent years. From that perspective, the combination of years of control and cost certainty in this deal is a huge win for the A’s; it’s much easier for them to chart their first years in Sin City than it was a year ago, and with each extension they reach, the needle is pushed even further on the dial.

Will the A’s be disappointed if Soderstrom ends up hitting his ZiPS projections in their entirety, instead of just the offensive side of things? Probably. But even that situation wouldn’t be terrible; it’s more ‘slight overpayment’ than ‘schedule clogger’. There is value in making this bet over and over again, as the A’s have done with Rooker and Butler. Take enough bites into the apple, and the bad results won’t feel so bad, because there will be good results to compensate.

In other words, you may not be thrilled with the team’s signings individually, but it’s hard to argue with the thinking behind them as a whole. Finding the right players is only half the battle. Getting them on your big league team at the same time, at rates you can afford, is the real key. The athletic club has acquired a bevy of position players in recent years, and now they are turning that into team stability by handing out deals. You like to see it.