MESA, Ariz. – Twenty-five years ago, the Athletics were on the verge of a dynasty. At least they should have been.
Led by a powerful offense and an emerging young pitching staff, the A’s won the American League West in 2000, getting their first taste of the postseason since the “Bash Brothers” era of the late-1980s/early 1990s. Jason Giambi won AL Most Valuable Player honors, Tim Hudson finished as the Cy Young runner-up, while Terrence Long came in second in Rookie of the Year voting.
The future was bright. Until it wasn’t.
Although the A’s would go to the playoffs in each of the next three years, the core of their team dwindled annually. Giambi left as a free agent after the 2001 season, Miguel Tejada – who won the AL MVP in 2002 – departed after the 2003 campaign. Hudson was traded after the 2004 season, two days before the A’s traded Mark Mulder, the 2001 Cy Young runner-up.
Barry Zito, who won the AL Cy Young in 2002, stayed in Oakland for four more years before joining Giambi and Tejada as ex-Athletics, finding new riches in free agency.
Only third baseman Eric Chavez, a three-time Gold Glove winner, signed a long-term deal, inking a six-year, $66 million deal prior to the 2004 season. Chavez said at the time that he landed his extension “by default,” noting the defections of Giambi and Tejada.
“It's almost entirely that we were never able to have these conversations,” general manager David Forst said of not extending any of the other players from that group. “We had payrolls in the 50s and 60s [millions], and you can't really get locked into anything on those and not risk having the roster flexibility that you need.”
Chavez won three more Gold Gloves in the three years after signing his deal, but he played only 154 games over the final four seasons, none of which ended with a winning record for the A’s.
“Billy [Beane] and I always talk about what it would have been like to keep those teams together,” Forst said. “If we had kept Giambi, Tejada, Chavez and those three pitchers together for another six, seven years, we could have had a pretty epic run. We talk about it, and we think about it, but we don't dwell on it; that was the nature of our circumstances.”
Those circumstances have finally changed, giving Forst an opportunity to build a sustainable winner from within.
Now, the A’s don’t have any MVPs or Cy Young winners on the roster, nor have they had a winning season since 2021, but Forst has put together a young core of exciting players he believes can lead the franchise back to the postseason – and, more importantly, into its new era in Las Vegas beginning in 2028.
“This was something we've talked about for years as a big part of the plan if and when we have the certainty of a new ballpark,” Forst said, noting that the club was also forced to trade Matt Chapman, Matt Olson and Sean Murphy in recent years. “It was important to send a sign that we were actually going to do it.”
The first player to land an extension was Brent Rooker, who signed a five-year, $60 million deal with a club option for 2030. Rooker was 30 when he signed the deal in January 2025, but after an All-Star breakout season in 2023 and a 39-homer, 112-RBI campaign in 2024, the A’s viewed him as an integral piece to build around – and his deal was an important message to send the rest of their players.
"Rook has been the adult in the room since he got here,” Forst said. “Brent will talk about this a lot; he has been every one of these guys. He's been the prospect. He's been the utility guy. He's now been the guy hitting in the middle of the lineup with a deal. He has the experience to actually be the leader of this group, and we needed that before we enticed other guys to sign up long-term.”
Two months later, the A’s signed Lawrence Butler to a seven-year, $65.5 million extension with a club option for 2032. Nine months after that, it was Tyler Soderstrom’s turn, as the club extended him for seven years and $86 million with an option for 2033. Last month, Jacob Wilson became the fourth member of the team’s extension club, agreeing to a seven-year, $70 million deal with an option for 2033.
“Every one of these is a risk/reward conversation; what's nerve-wracking is doing one of them and absolutely needing that to hit; we ran into that a long time ago when we signed Chavez,” Forst said. “I never like to talk about players this way, but you're putting together a diverse portfolio, essentially. We have a DH in Rook, a little more veteran. We have the youngest guy in Tyler, who you're locking up through age 30. Lawrence had a little more big league time; Jacob is the first-round pick. You stagger the free-agent salaries, you stagger the years that you're committed to, and then ultimately you build the rest of the roster around them.”
Forst declined to comment on reports that the club has engaged with reigning AL Rookie of the Year Nick Kurtz and slugging catcher Shea Langeliers about extensions, though he acknowledged that “we've had conversations with more than four guys about it, and hopefully there will be more conversations going forward.”
With a deep system of pitching talent that includes J.T. Ginn, Luis Morales, Jack Perkins and Gunnar Hoglund – and prospects Jamie Arnold, Gage Jump, Wei-En Lin and Braden Nett (four of the club’s top six according to MLB Pipeline) on the way – Forst believes the club is in “as good a place in pitching both depth and talent-wise” as it has been in a decade.
COMPLETE ATHLETICS PROSPECT COVERAGE
With two more seasons until they move from their temporary home in Sacramento to their new ballpark in Las Vegas, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Convincing pitchers to play in hitter-friendly Sutter Health Park isn’t easy, but Forst believes that the prospect of playing in the new stadium – which he said is being constructed to be “as neutral as possible” – will help attract free agents to the franchise moving forward.
“I think a year from now, if we're talking three-, four- or five-year deals with free agents, and they know that only one of those years is in Sacramento, I think it will be a big difference in interest,” Forst said. “Certainly, if you're talking about the offseason before ’28, I expect there to be a lot of interest in players coming there to play.”
Moving to Las Vegas will open up revenue streams that didn’t exist at the Coliseum, and while that should allow the A’s to play in the free-agent market in a way they haven’t before, Forst believes the move – combined with the core pieces that have already been locked in place through the extensions – will have an enormous impact on the club’s ability to build a sustainable winner.
“I don't think it's like hyperbole to say it changes just about everything,” Forst said. “At the lowest level, it changes our payroll and how much money we have to spend on Major League players. But it also changes your ability to map things out four or five years at a time, where we're projecting revenues, all those things, we were always year-to-year. We were ‘transactional,’ is the word that Billy always used; we just did our best to put everything we had into that year of Major League payroll. Now we can plan out.”
Forst knows the A’s haven’t won anything yet; the club hasn’t been to the postseason since the COVID-shortened 2020 season and hasn’t had a winning record since 2021. It remains to be seen what the 2026 A’s can accomplish, but the long-term vision is much brighter than it’s been in quite some time.
“Let's see what it looks like in a few years,” Forst said. “We're not patting ourselves on the back just for getting the contracts signed. You still have to put the rosters together, and you have to go out and actually change the results on the field. I'm happy for my group that this is what we're working on now, rather than having to turn the roster over every single year.”