Taylor Smith Inherits 98 Losses, a 60-Day IL Full of Stars, and a Las Vegas Countdown

The most consequential Athletics news of the past week wasn't a transaction. It was a job title.

Oakland finalized the hiring of Taylor Smith as president of baseball operations, luring him away from a Red Sox front office that has now lost multiple executives to outside opportunities. At his introductory press conference, owner John Fisher floated the idea of adding a general manager beneath Smith — an increasingly common structure around the league — and the interview list has since grown to include James Click, Mike Rizzo, Billy Owens, Mike Groopman and Sam Fuld. Jared Banner, also linked to the A's search, instead took the Orioles' GM job.

That's the headline. The context is grimmer.

What Smith actually walked into

The A's went 64-98 in 2026, a .395 winning percentage, after winning 76 games the year before. The run differential was minus-238: 699 runs scored, 937 allowed. That's a 34-run-per-season deterioration wrapped inside a rebuild that was supposed to be trending the other direction.

The pitching is the wound. Oakland's 5.41 team ERA ranked 29th in baseball, ahead of only Colorado, and the underlying numbers are just as unkind — a 1.52 WHIP, 222 home runs allowed, and 629 walks. Only the Rockies were worse at preventing runs. The bullpen's 4.37 ERA was survivable by comparison, which tells you how much of the damage came from the rotation.

The late-season trend is worse than the season-long number. Over the final ten games the A's carried a 7.55 ERA and a 1.694 WHIP, with a .300 winning percentage in that stretch. This is not a team that limped to the finish line; it's one that came apart at it.

The injury list explains a lot — but not everything

Ten players finished the year on the 60-day injured list, and the names at the top are the reason the lineup looked so different by September.

Nick Kurtz, an All-Star at 23, hit .256/.396/.483 with 21 home runs in 99 games and produced 3.68 WAR before a right thumb injury — treated with a platelet-rich plasma injection and four weeks of immobilization — ended his season. His batted-ball profile was genuinely elite: 99th percentile in barrel rate, 100th in walk rate and hard-hit rate, 98th in exit velocity. Jacob Wilson, the shortstop, had left shoulder surgery on September 16 and is expected to miss the remainder of the year. Brent Rooker, Tyler Soderstrom and Gunnar Hoglund all landed on the 60-day list too.

Any honest read of the 64-98 record has to account for that. A lineup missing Kurtz and Wilson for the second half is not the same lineup that will show up in April.

The decisions that will define the winter

Smith's first real test is Shea Langeliers. The catcher hit .262/.328/.474 with 23 home runs across 106 games and graded out at 3.44 WAR, with roughly nine runs of defensive value — a genuinely valuable player at the position. He is also, per reporting, one of the more obvious trade candidates on the roster, and the A's front office has a track record of moving players in exactly this situation. With the GM chair still empty, though, it's hard to say who makes that call.

The clock matters here. 2027 is Oakland's final year in West Sacramento before the move to Las Vegas in 2028. Smith was hired specifically for his analytics and player-development background, areas where the organization has fallen behind. That's an infrastructure job measured in years, not months — but the standings will be measuring him in months anyway.

One thing that isn't in question: J.T. Ginn's 3.71 ERA over 138 1/3 innings and 24 starts is the closest thing this rotation has to a building block, and it's a thin foundation for a staff that just allowed the second-most runs in the sport.

The A's aren't a piece away. They're a front office, a rotation, and two healthy young cornerstones away. This week answered the first question.