{"id":2052853,"date":"2025-09-26T22:08:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T22:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2052853"},"modified":"2025-09-26T22:08:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T22:08:08","slug":"as-starting-former-royals-prospect-against-kansas-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/as-starting-former-royals-prospect-against-kansas-city\/","title":{"rendered":"A’s Starting Former Royals Prospect Against Kansas City"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The A’s and Kansas City Royals are set to wrap up their 2025 seasons this weekend in West Sacramento, and according to Mart\u00edn Gallegos of MLB.com<\/a>, there will be a familiar face on the mound for the Athletics.<\/p>\n

At last year’s Trade Deadline, the A’s traded relief pitcher Lucas Erceg<\/a> to the Royals in exchange for a package of prospects. In that group was relief pitcher Will Klein (now with the Dodgers<\/a>), outfielder Jared Dickey, and tonight’s starter for the green and gold, righty Mason Barnett. <\/p>\n

After the trade, Barnett seemed to have found another gear while pitching in Double-A Midland with the A’s affiliate. After posting a 4.91 ERA (3.68 FIP) with a 27.4% strikeout rate and a 9% walk rate with the Royals’ affiliate, he posted a 2.61 ERA (3.24 FIP) with a 31.1% strikeout rate and a 7.8% walk rate. There was a lot of excitement about this turnaround heading into 2025.<\/p>\n

He was promoted to Triple-A Las Vegas to begin the year, and the results weren’t great. Across 25 games (23 starts) and 119 innings of work, he held a 6.13 ERA (5.53 FIP) while his strikeout rate dropped to 22.8% and his walk rate climbed to 11.9%.<\/p>\n

The Athletics still decided to give him a shot in the rotation<\/a> as injuries continued to pile up in the big-league rotation late in the season, and in four starts he’s lasted a total of 16 2\/3 innings and holds a 7.56 ERA (4.70 FIP). One problem has been that when he allows baserunners, they have a tendancy to come around and score.<\/p>\n

His LOB (left on base) rate this season is just 59.6%, albeit in a small sample size. The worst qualified starter by this metric, Washington’s Mitchell Parker, has a LOB% of 60.8%. The league’s average is 72.3%. <\/p>\n

This is presumably one of those stats that tends to even out, like when a team has a terrible (or excellent) record in one-run games one year. That said, his LOB% was 66.8% in the minors this season, and 68.2% between both stops a year ago. <\/p>\n

The 24-year-old last pitched on September 17 in Boston, going four innings, giving up five hits, three runs (two earned), a trio of walks, and struck out two. He should be well rested for his final outing of the season. <\/p>\n

As for Erceg, he is out for the season<\/a> after landing on the IL last week with right shoulder fatigue. The veteran righty has been solid for Kansas City this season, going 8-4 with a 2.64 ERA and a 1.17 WHIP in 61 1\/3 innings of work. He also held the lead in 22 games and earned two saves. <\/p>\n

The A’s and Royals will play a pair of night games on Friday and Saturday, with first pitch scheduled for 7:05 p.m. (PT) for each. They will finish up the season on Sunday, with first pitch scheduled for 12:05 p.m. (PT) along with every other team in baseball. The Athletics have not announced their starter for the finale, but will toss out Luis Morales on Saturday night. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.si.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The A’s and Kansas City Royals are set to wrap up their 2025 seasons this weekend in West Sacramento, and according to Mart\u00edn Gallegos of MLB.com, there will be a familiar face on the mound for the Athletics. At last year’s Trade Deadline, the A’s traded relief pitcher Lucas Erceg to the Royals in exchange […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2052854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2052853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/As-Starting-Former-Royals-Prospect-Against-Kansas-City.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2052853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2052854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2052853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2052853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2052853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}