Former Arizona Diamondbacks Pitcher Fitting in Nicely with A's

Jason Burke | Apr 7, 2024

Apr 2, 2024; Oakland, California, USA; Oakland Athletics pitcher Austin Adams (29) delivers a pitch / D. Ross Cameron-USA TODAY Sports

When the Oakland A's acquired Austin Adams in a trade with the New York Mets just days ahead of the season opener, he arrived before the Monday contest in Oakland against the San Francisco Giants. At that point, he has yet to meet manager Mark Kotsay, but he'd played ball with some of the guys in the clubhouse at various points in his career.

The right-hander comes equipped with a nasty slider that he throws at least 80% of the time most games, which has led to a 47.4% whiff rate in the early going in 2024, even though batters know it's coming. Through 3.2 scoreless innings pitched, he has allowed just one hit, walked a batter, hit a batter, and struck out six.

So why are we talking about a middle reliever that has had success in a small sample size?

Simple. Adams has a career 4.04 ERA across 118 innings with five different teams spanning eight seasons. He's touched 50 innings just once, with the San Diego Padres back in 2021 where he struck out 76 batters in 52.2 innings.

Yet, if you take a look at his expected ERA (xERA) from each of those seasons, he's been a bit unlucky. Take last year with the Diamondbacks for instance. He tossed 17.1 innings, walked eight, struck out 22, and held a 5.71 ERA. His xERA was a solid 3.55. In fact, dating back to 2019, his xERA has topped four just once, in 2021, when it was 4.09.

For an A's team that is looking for quality relief arms to help get through the season (and perhaps become trade bait this summer), Adams is off to a nice start, and the advanced metrics seem to like him quite a bit.

His batting average allowed is .111, which is great, but his xBA is even lower at .101. Yes, it's an extremely small sample size, but the results seem to be following the projections for once. His page on Baseball Savant is filled with red bars, most of which land between the 88th and 99th percentiles.

Given that he has appeared in five of the A's first nine games, it's safe to say that he's more familiar with Mark Kotay than he was a little over a week ago.