The Athletics are working to add talent this winter before the team’s first season in West Sacramento, Calif. After improving by 19 wins in 2024 with a 69-93 record, the team is beginning to build towards a Las Vegas debut in 2028.
The A’s will play in a minor-league park until then, so the team is not expected to make any big splashes on the free-agent market yet. However, there will likely be a number of smaller moves on low-risk, high-reward players this offseason.
To that end, Joel Reuter of Bleacher Report predicts that the A’s will sign third baseman Yoan Moncada.
Reuter points out that the A’s used 10 different players at third base last season and that the position remains the most glaring hole in the lineup.
Moncada, a nine-year MLB veteran, has played mostly third base in his big-league career, yet also was stationed at second base for the entirety of his 2017 and 2018 campaigns.
is talented yet injury-prone. Once considered one of the rising stars in MLB, he provided reliable production in the middle of the White Sox lineup in the latter seasons of the last decade.
Many believed Moncada was on his way to breaking out as a superstar in 2019 when he logged career bests with a .315 batting average, 25 home runs, and 79 RBI.
After a sub-par season in the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign, he turned in a solid yet unspectacular 2021 by hitting .263 with 14 homers and 61 RBI.
However, that’s where the injuries began for Moncada. In 2022, he missed nearly 60 games due to quad, hamstring, foot, and oblique injuries. The next season, he played in just 92 games due to a recurring back issue.
Last season, he played his fewest games (12) since his MLB-debut campaign with the Boston Red Sox in 2016 due to an adductor strain suffered in April.
After hitting 25 round-trippers in 2019, Moncada took the ball deep just 23 times since the end of the 2021 season.
The White Sox declined their $25 million team option to retain Moncada after the World Series ended, making him a free agent.
Spotrac calculates Moncada’s market value at $1.5 million on a one-year contract.
More MLB: Blue Jays tabbed to sign 2-time All-Star from divisional foe