WEST SACRAMENTO – Lawrence Butler removed the elephant mask from his head and let out a huge sigh of relief inside the Athletics dugout. A few innings later, Luis Severino soaked in a standing ovation from the home fans as he made his way back to the clubhouse.
The A’s have patiently watched these two navigate through rough starts to their seasons. Despite that, the club has maintained its standing atop the American League West in first place. Long term, though, Butler – a dynamic speed and power threat on offense – and Severino – the rotation’s leader and No. 1 starter – are key players whose success is pivotal to the A’s playoff-aspirational goals for 2026.
That duo combined for the type of night on Wednesday that the A’s hope to see more often going forward. Butler emphatically broke a 1-1 tie in the fourth inning by crushing a slider from Michael Wacha to the berm in right field for a three-run homer at a Statcast–projected 404 feet. That blast provided more than enough support for Severino, who fired seven strong innings of one-run ball with a season-high eight strikeouts in a 5-2 win over the Royals at Sutter Health Park.
Butler entered the day sporting a tough .184/.260/.276 slash line through 27 games. Those numbers, however, don’t tell the whole story about his season thus far. Before the game, manager Mark Kotsay pointed out a different set of numbers for the 25-year-old outfielder.
“When you look at Lawrence, all his hard-hit contact is not resulting in hits,” Kotsay said. “Early in the season, that’s really what you want to see up there as a player. I do feel like his at-bats overall, if you look at the collection of at-bats, they’re still good. They’re solid.”
Kotsay’s assessment proves to be true on Butler’s Statcast page. His hard-hit rate (49.2%) entering Wednesday ranked in the 84th percentile in MLB. But the gap between his actual batting average and expected batting average (xBA) of .250 was the 12th-biggest difference of any hitter in MLB.
Long story short, Butler has been swinging the bat well without much to show for it.
“They say [those numbers] always come back around, so I’m just waiting on it to come back around,” Butler said with a laugh. “That’s pretty much what it is. You just have to have the ‘next at-bat’ mindset.”
That mentality is easier said than done when the hits aren’t falling. In the case of Butler, his infectious personality is always there regardless of whether he’s in a slump or on a hot streak.
But when he’s coming up clutch in big moments, like he did Wednesday, there’s nothing quite like that version of Butler and the energy he exudes in the aftermath.
“For Law, we’ve talked about the grind that he’s going through and trying to get results,” Kotsay said. “It was nice to see the result tonight, and the joy. It’s always nice to see Law Dog smiling, for sure.”
Severino, meanwhile, carried a 5.17 ERA into Wednesday’s start. While that number was unflattering, Severino appeared to be turning a corner in his previous outing against the Rangers in Texas last week, which saw him issue just one walk in an 8-1 victory after combining for 20 walks through his first five starts.
The key to his turnaround was fixing his direction toward home plate, a mechanical adjustment he discovered before that start in Texas and continued to implement against the Royals.
“When I was going towards home, my body was more out of rotation,” Severino said. “I was rotating late. I noticed that, so I worked on staying back but not being open with my arm. Getting that movement towards home plate, I feel like I was going to third base a little bit and then trying to rotate at the end, so I was pulling all my pitches. Since then, I just feel more in command and feel like I can throw the ball wherever I want.”
Pitching better at home is also essential for Severino, who entered the night 2-10 with a 6.15 ERA in 17 starts at Sutter Health Park since joining the A’s last season, the highest home ERA in MLB since the start of the 2025 season (min. 80 innings pitched).
Like with Butler, the A’s will never be at their best until Severino is at his best. On Wednesday, they got a glimpse of what that looks like.