The A's Are 62-95 and Out of the Race — Their Real Competition Is a GM Search

The Oakland Athletics have 157 games in the books and nothing left to play for but a draft position. They are 62-95, fourth in the AL West, on the wrong end of a minus-221 run differential, and one week from completing a fifth consecutive losing season. Conventional wisdom says the story of the week is the product on the field in Sacramento.

It isn't. The story is the search happening off it.

The Front Office Vacancy

The A's parted ways with David Forst in August, framing it as a mutual agreement — the end of a 27-year organizational run and 11 seasons as general manager. Dan Feinstein, formerly the assistant GM, has served as interim GM for the remainder of the season. The club has been conducting first-stage interviews by video call, and the candidate list has grown into something genuinely interesting.

Three names have drawn the most reporting so far:

• James Click, the former Astros general manager, whom USA Today's Bob Nightengale described as having "emerged as a serious candidate."
• Mike Rizzo, the former Nationals president of baseball operations, who built Washington's 2019 championship club.
• Billy Owens, the longtime Athletics assistant general manager and an internal continuity candidate.

The search then widened to Boston, where Red Sox assistant GMs Mike Groopman and Taylor Smith both interviewed, per Over-Slot Baseball's Joe Doyle and MassLive's Sean McAdam. The pool now spans a World Series-winning executive, a homegrown ladder-climber, and two lieutenants from one of the game's better-run player development operations.

Why It Matters More Than Tonight's Lineup

The argument that this job is undesirable — a nomadic team playing in a minor-league park with a Vegas move looming — has been made often enough that the counterargument is worth restating. Whoever takes this seat inherits a blank slate, a top-tier farm system headlined by Henry Bolte, and the rare chance to build a roster on their own timeline without a contending window closing behind them.

That's also the risk. The next GM inherits a pitching staff with a 5.48 ERA, a 1.51 WHIP, and a 4.28 walks-per-nine rate that ranks among the worst in baseball. The offense has been middling — a .252 average and .735 OPS — and the run prevention has been a disaster. The 900 runs allowed tell you the roster needs more than tinkering.

And the injury list explains a chunk of it. Brent Rooker, Jacob Wilson, Nick Kurtz, Tyler Soderstrom, Luis Severino, J.T. Ginn, and Gunnar Hoglund all sit on the IL, several on the 60-day. That is a sizable portion of the players the front office expected to evaluate this season. For the fifth year running, evaluation has been conducted on a roster that doesn't resemble the intended one.

The Closing Stretch

Results lately have been grim even by this season's standards. Oakland is 3-7 over its last ten and 1-4 over its last five, with a 7.56 ERA across that ten-game window and an OPS under .700. The A's dropped a series to the Guardians and now host the Angels at Sutter Health Park, where the market lists them as a modest home underdog with the total sitting at 9.5 — a number that reflects just how much offense this ballpark and these two pitching staffs can produce.

None of that changes the stakes of the week. The A's will lose close to 100 games regardless of who's in the dugout, and the next GM will be judged on a horizon measured in years, not evenings.

For a franchise that has spent a decade sliding, the hire is the first real fork in the road — and it's the only competition Oakland can still win this season.