A's sit at 57-86 as FanGraphs investigates what went wrong in Sacramento

What happened

The Oakland Athletics arrived in Sacramento carrying genuine momentum. Back-to-back seasons of improvement, a roster full of young hitters who had either broken in or broken out, and preseason projections — per Ben Clemens at FanGraphs — that placed the club somewhere between 75 and 80 wins. The AL West, as it turned out, was soft enough that a modest win total might have been enough to take the division. The A's are not part of that conversation. Per Clemens's analysis, they sit at 54-86, one game ahead of the Angels for the worst record in baseball, and have been outscored by 194 runs on the season — 54 runs clear of the Rockies in second-to-last place on that particular leaderboard.

Updated through September 6, the club stands at 57-86 (.399), fourth in the AL West, 16 games back of the division lead, and ranked 11th in the Wild Card picture at 15.0 games relative to the cut line. The four-game winning streak currently attached to that record is, under the circumstances, a little like finding a twenty in the pocket of a coat you haven't worn since the bad times.

Why it matters

Clemens frames the investigation as two things at once: rubbernecking, which he acknowledges is fun, and a genuine attempt to figure out what the A's should look like heading into 2027. That dual purpose is worth holding onto, because the collapse is not simply a bad team being bad — it is a bad team that was supposed to be good, built around a core that had produced real results.

In 2023, per Clemens, the A's won only 50 games and were outscored by 339 runs. They improved by 19 games in 2024. They improved again in 2025, reaching a 76-86 record. Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers, Tyler Soderstrom, Brent Rooker, and Jacob Wilson either broke in or broke out across that span. The organization added Jeff McNeil via trade to fill an eighth lineup spot. The plan, Clemens notes, was to score a boatload of runs — a reasonable ambition given the dimensions of Sutter Health Park. What has actually happened to that offense is the central question of his piece.

The broader context matters too. The American League is, per Clemens, about as bad as it has ever been in 2026, and the AL West is particularly poor. A team that was a trendy playoff pick coming into the year has instead found itself in a race to the bottom with the Angels. That is not a small miss. That is a structural question about whether the improvement of the previous two seasons was real, sustainable, or something more fragile.

The numbers

The FanGraphs piece includes a table of core hitters comparing their 2025 wRC+ to their 2026 projections and their actual 2026 wRC+. The results are instructive.

Nick Kurtz posted a 165 wRC+ in 2025. He was projected at 136 in 2026 and has come in at 139 — essentially on target, and still the best bat in the lineup by a comfortable margin. Shea Langeliers went from 127 in 2025 to a projection of 119 and an actual mark of 122. Tyler Soderstrom was 120 in 2025, projected at 116, and has landed at 117. Those three have more or less done what was asked of them.

The regression has come elsewhere. Jacob Wilson was 116 in 2025, projected at 113, and has posted 83 in 2026 — a meaningful step back from a player who had a standout rookie season. Brent Rooker was 117 in 2025, projected at 130 given his track record, and has come in at 78. That gap between a 130 projection and a 78 outcome is the kind of number that tends to anchor an offense in place rather than carry it forward.

The club's record sits at 57-86 (.399), and the run differential Clemens cites — outscored by 194 runs — is consistent with a team whose offense has underperformed its construction even as a few pieces have held up.

Where the club stands

The Athletics are 57-86 (.399), fourth in the AL West, 16 games back of the division lead, and 15.0 games below the Wild Card cut line — ranked 11th in that race. They are currently on a four-game winning streak, which is the kind of detail that earns a raised eyebrow in early September when the standings look like this.

The schedule ahead offers no particular relief from relevance. The A's are at Seattle on Sunday, September 6, with Gage Jump projected to start against Bryan Woo at T-Mobile Park. They then return to Sutter Health Park to host the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday and Tuesday, September 7 and 8.

The club stated its goal for the final month of the season four days ago, per Posterior reporting: play spoiler against postseason contenders. That framing is honest, and it is also the kind of thing a team says when the standings have made the alternative framings unavailable.

What we don't know yet

The FanGraphs piece, per Clemens, is explicitly an investigation in progress — he notes he wants to figure out what to think about the A's for 2027, which means the full accounting is still being assembled. The source table is truncated in the available material, so the complete picture of how Lawrence Butler and the center field options (Denzel Clarke or Henry Bolte, per Clemens) have performed in 2026 is not fully visible here.

On the roster side, Shea Langeliers is dealing with a knee injury, and per Posterior reporting five days ago, the team has left open the possibility of a September return rather than a season-ending stint — though nothing has been announced. J.T. Ginn was placed on the 15-day IL with right elbow impingement on Friday, per Posterior reporting, and has not pitched since August 26; the team has not ruled out a return before the season ends, but his status remains uncertain. Tommy White exited a game against the Rangers with lower back tightness four days ago, per Posterior reporting, and his availability is also unclear.

The rotation has been shuffled in recent days as well. Per Posterior reporting, Jack Perkins was optioned on Thursday and the club slotted in another arm as Ginn sought a second opinion — the kind of September rotation arithmetic that tends to resolve itself one start at a time.

What to watch

The question Clemens is really asking — whether the A's core is still a foundation or whether 2026 has revealed something more concerning — will not be answered before the final out of the season. But the individual trajectories of Wilson and Rooker, both of whom have posted wRC+ figures well below their projections, are the numbers worth tracking as the schedule winds down.

Denzel Clarke is reportedly nearing a return from an injury absence, per Posterior reporting five days ago, which could affect how the outfield is deployed over the final weeks. Whether Langeliers returns to catch any September games remains an open question.

And then there is the larger frame: a team that won 50 games in 2023, improved steadily through 2024 and 2025, and then arrived at 2026 as a playoff contender only to find itself a game out of last place. Ben Clemens at FanGraphs is doing the work of figuring out why. The answer, when it arrives, will matter considerably more for Sacramento's winter than for its September.