Athletics Week in Review: Gage Jump Sparkles While the Sell-Off Clock Ticks

The Athletics went 2-5 this week, and yet it was one of the more interesting weeks Sacramento's temporary tenants have put together all summer. They split the spotlight between a pair of tidy wins — a 2-0 shutout in Minnesota and a 4-3 stunner that ended Boston's month-long heater — and a string of close losses that reminded everyone why this team sits last in the AL West at 45-64. With the trade deadline arriving Monday at 6 p.m. ET, the latest Athletics news is less about this week's standings and more about which veterans are still wearing green and gold by Tuesday morning.

The Week That Was: Athletics Drop Five of Seven

The week opened in Minneapolis on Friday, July 24, with the kind of game the A's rarely win: a 2-0 shutout of the Twins built on a Lawrence Butler sacrifice fly, a Tyler Soderstrom RBI single, and a bullpen that wriggled out of a bases-loaded jam in the sixth before Hogan Harris slammed the door in the ninth. The Twins returned the favor on Saturday, blanking the A's 2-0 behind a strong spot start and a two-run single from Roden. Sunday's finale was a mess — an 11-8 loss that featured a Kody Clemens Little League home run for Minnesota and a three-run blast from Nick Kurtz, his 21st of the season, in a comeback that never quite got there.

Back home at Sutter Health Park, the A's ran into a Red Sox club that had won 18 of 20, and it mostly went how you'd expect. Boston took the opener 4-2 on Monday, with Ceddanne Rafaela's sixth-inning grand slam erasing the early lead Soderstrom's first-inning homer — his 17th — had provided. Jonah Heim added a solo shot, but the four-spot held up. Tuesday brought the week's high point, a 4-3 win that snapped Boston's surge. Wednesday and Thursday were near-miss losses, 4-2 and 5-4, the latter against Sonny Gray, who came in 12-2 with a 2.78 ERA while the A's countered with rookie Mason Barnett, recently called up from Triple-A Las Vegas. Four one-run-or-two-run losses in a week tells you the effort is there; the depth is not.

Gage Jump and the Kids Keep the Lights On

Tuesday's 4-3 win over Boston deserves its own section, because it was the most encouraging nine innings of Athletics baseball in a while. Rookie left-hander Gage Jump threw six scoreless innings, allowing three hits and striking out seven against one of the hottest lineups in baseball. Brian Serven provided the decisive swing, a two-run homer in the seventh that was his first big-league home run since August 2022 — the kind of detail you only get on a roster like this one. Tommy White went 4-for-4 and scored twice, Butler tacked on an insurance RBI double in the eighth, and Harris survived Connor Wong's two-run homer in the ninth to notch his ninth save.

Zoom out and the young core is quietly giving fans a reason to keep watching. Kurtz is hitting .260 with a .491 slugging percentage and 21 home runs, numbers that hold up in any lineup in the league. Soderstrom sits at .249 with a .475 slug and 17 homers, and he chipped in all week — the RBI single Friday, the homer Monday, a sliding catch Sunday. Jump has pitched to a 4.00 ERA, which reads as ace material on a staff that ranks near the bottom of baseball, and Thursday's start went to Mason Barnett, another arm up from Las Vegas with barely 20 big-league innings behind him. The veterans are a different story: Jeffrey Springs carries an ERA hovering around six across more than 100 innings, which is a problem both for the standings and for his trade value. The gap between the two groups is the whole franchise argument in miniature — the kids are the future, and the future has a street address on the Las Vegas Strip.

Standings Check: Last in the West, Eyes on 2028

At 45-64, the Athletics are buried in the AL West basement, roughly ten and a half games behind a first-place Texas club that is itself barely above .500 at 55-53, with Houston and Seattle bunched in between. That is the strange mercy of this division in 2026 — nobody is running away with it — but the A's are far closer to the draft-lottery conversation than the wild-card one, and the betting markets have treated them accordingly: they've won just 13 of 32 games as favorites this season, one of the worst such marks in baseball.

The organizational math has never been subtle. This team plays its home games in a 14,000-seat Triple-A park in West Sacramento — Sutter Health Park, shared with the River Cats — and already spent a week in June playing six "home" dates against the Brewers and Rockies at 10,000-seat Las Vegas Ballpark in Summerlin, a dry run for the relocation. The $2 billion Strip ballpark remains targeted to open in 2028, with steel going vertical this year, and every roster decision runs through that timeline. When people ask why a team with Kurtz, Soderstrom, and Butler isn't pushing chips in now, the answer is on a construction schedule in Nevada.

Athletics Trade Deadline Outlook: Everything Movable Is for Sale

The deadline lands Monday, August 3, and the A's are unambiguous sellers. The shopping aisle, per reporting this month, includes:

• Jeff McNeil — hitting .238 with four homers on an expiring deal; a change-of-scenery bench bat for a contender, with a modest return expected.
• Jeffrey Springs — an innings eater whose ERA limits the market, though contenders always need August arms.
• Mark Leiter Jr. — statistically the best rental reliever here, but a hip impingement has him on the injured list through the deadline, which complicates everything.
• Jonah Heim — a veteran catcher on an expiring contract for teams needing depth behind the plate.
• Carlos Cortes — a pre-arbitration outfielder viewed as the most likely departure from a crowded outfield picture.

What isn't moving matters just as much. Shea Langeliers, Harris, Soderstrom, and the young arms — Jump, Jack Perkins, and friends — are the protected core. If the front office holds that line, this deadline becomes a housecleaning rather than a teardown, because the teardown already happened.

What's Next for the Athletics

The Tigers come to West Sacramento for a weekend set, and Detroit has had the A's number, taking three straight from them earlier in July and sweeping them in August of last year. The pitching matchups:

• Friday, July 31: Jeffrey Springs vs. Casey Mize — quite possibly Springs' final start in an A's uniform.
• Saturday, August 1: Jack Perkins vs. Framber Valdez.
• Sunday, August 2: Gage Jump vs. Keider Montero.

Then comes Monday's 6 p.m. ET deadline, which will tell us more about the franchise's near-term intentions than any series could.

The honest read on the Athletics this week: the record is grim, the venue situation is surreal, and yet the product on the field keeps producing genuine reasons to check the box score — a Kurtz homer here, a Jump gem there. If the front office converts its veterans into anything useful by Monday, this week in review will look like a hinge point. Either way, keep an eye on Athletics news through the weekend, because the roster you see against Detroit is not the one you'll see by Tuesday.