Taylor Smith Inherits 98 Losses, but the A's Real Problem Was the Training Room

The Athletics finally have their answer at the top. After dismissing longtime general manager David Forst on August 7 and watching a wide-ranging search drag through September, the club named Taylor Smith — most recently an assistant general manager with the Red Sox, and before that a seven-season fixture in the analytics-forward Rays front office — as its new president of baseball operations.

It was not a smooth courtship. Sam Fuld, the former A's outfielder turned Phillies executive, was offered the job and turned it down. Jon Daniels removed himself from consideration. Derek Falvey declined even to interview before landing with the Mets. By the time Smith accepted, the search had become a public tour of the candidates who said no. That context matters, because Smith takes over a franchise with a well-documented habit of asking people to do difficult work with limited resources — and he is the one who eventually said yes.

What he inherits is a 64-98 team that finished dead last in the season's final power rating, rated roughly two runs worse than an average club on a neutral field. The A's were outscored by 238 runs, allowed 937, and posted a 5.57 team ERA. None of that is a mystery to anyone who watched the season.

But the standings obscure the more interesting question, which is why the season went this way. The answer, more than anything, is health.

The lineup was never whole. Nick Kurtz, Brent Rooker, Shea Langeliers and Tyler Soderstrom all missed significant time, and an offense that ranked 12th in scoring in 2025 slipped to 20th in 2026. Look at what the survivors did when available: Kurtz hit .256 with a .396 on-base percentage, 21 homers and an .879 OPS in 99 games. Langeliers posted a .262/.328/.474 line with 23 home runs in 106 games. Soderstrom added 19 homers and an .810 OPS in 109. Those are the numbers of a competent major-league middle of the order — they just arrived in fragments.

Rooker's season is the starkest illustration. He managed 180 at-bats, hit .200, and finished with a .670 OPS. The A's entered the offseason with ten players on the 60-day injured list, Rooker among them. Lawrence Butler, one of the few who stayed upright, played 154 games and hit .237 with a .720 OPS — respectable volume, modest impact.

The rotation has its own arithmetic problem. Jeffrey Springs led the staff in innings at 142.2 and went 4-14 with a 6.18 ERA. The bullpen's 4.37 ERA was actually a relative bright spot. Smith's Rays pedigree is in pitching development and data-driven roster construction, which is precisely the skill set this roster needs, but development takes time and the A's have limited margin.

That margin is about to get thinner in a very literal sense. The club heads into its final year in West Sacramento before the 2028 move to Las Vegas, and it is still operating without a settled long-term home-field identity. Meanwhile, the front office has real decisions to make — MLB Trade Rumors has already flagged Langeliers as a trade candidate, which would mean dealing a 23-homer catcher in his prime while the lineup is still trying to establish continuity.

So the case for 2027 rests on two things Smith can actually influence. First, whether the young core — Kurtz, Soderstrom, Langeliers, Wilson, Butler — can share a field for 140 games instead of 100. Second, whether the pitching infrastructure that produced a 5.57 ERA can be rebuilt from the ground up rather than patched. A healthy version of this roster is not a contender, but it is meaningfully better than 64-98.

The number that will define his tenure isn't the win total from 2026. It's how many of those names are on the injured list come April.