{"id":82981,"date":"2024-08-13T20:48:06","date_gmt":"2024-08-14T00:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=82981"},"modified":"2024-08-13T20:48:06","modified_gmt":"2024-08-14T00:48:06","slug":"oakland-as-dfa-relief-pitcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/08\/13\/oakland-as-dfa-relief-pitcher\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland A&#8217;s DFA Relief Pitcher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/06\/25\/athletics-aaron-brooks-dfa\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">The Oakland Athletics<\/a> have designated relief pitcher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/mulleky01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-08-13_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kyle Muller<\/a> for assignment. He was acquired in 2022 in a trade with the Atlanta Braves, which involved sending <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=murphse01,murphy011sea,murphy013sea,murphy010sea&amp;search=Sean+Murphy&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-08-13_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sean Murphy<\/a> to the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2022\/12\/12\/sean-murphy-traded-to-braves\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Braves<\/a> and William Contreas to the Milwaukee Brewers. Muller was one of five players acquired in the trade.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">A vital piece of the return that the <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Athletics?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Athletics<\/a> got from the <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Braves?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Braves<\/a> in the Sean Murphy trade, now designated for assignment&#8230;<a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/EUxaVZk2bG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/EUxaVZk2bG<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 MLB Trade Rumors (@mlbtraderumors) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mlbtraderumors\/status\/1823472926391185587?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 13, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Athletics Relief Pitcher Designated for Assignment<\/h2>\n<h3>Muller&#8217;s Inconsistencies<\/h3>\n<p>When the A&#8217;s acquired Muller, he was recognized as a top prospect by the Braves. Muller used to be a starter and showed solid promise following pitching deep into games. Muller also earned himself the Gatorade Player of the Year award in 2015. Due to this, the A&#8217;s had faith in Muller, but unfortunately, in 2022, he recorded an ERA of 8.03. The 2023 season wasn&#8217;t revamped, with a 1-5 record and an ERA of 7.60. This season, his ERA has dropped to 4.22. Following his unsuccessful 2022 season, he was sent down to the minors. But being in Triple-A didn&#8217;t allow him to prosper. He sported a 7.26 ERA across 13 starts. The A&#8217;s continued to keep him in the reliever role in the majors as they had their hands tied.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s successfully improved his ERA this season, even with going on the IL with left shoulder tendinitis on May 30th. In addition, he had a promising walk rate of 5.1 %. But aside from this, he&#8217;s had his struggles with giving up home runs. As well, he needed much work to improve his velocity. The reason behind Muller&#8217;s designation, aside from his struggles, is also due to his out-of-options dilemma with his contract. But what had also attracted the A&#8217;s to Muller was that he has experience as a lefty. Overall, keeping him long-term was not something that the A&#8217;s could afford to do\u2014especially considering that he hasn&#8217;t improved enough for them to consider him a strong enough piece in the bullpen. With Muller being DFA&#8217;d, starting pitcher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/boylejo01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-08-13_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Joe Boyle<\/a> has been recalled, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/stripro01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-08-13_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ross Stripling<\/a> has taken over in the pen.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credits: Robert Edwards-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Oakland Athletics have designated relief pitcher Kyle Muller for assignment. He was acquired in 2022 in a trade with the Atlanta Braves, which involved sending Sean Murphy to the Braves and William Contreas to the Milwaukee Brewers. Muller was one of five players acquired in the trade. &nbsp; A vital piece of the return [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4831,"featured_media":83011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1071,35],"tags":[48,2513,6511,5003,2922,273,3074,5896],"class_list":["post-82981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-mlb","category-news","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-injured-list","tag-joe-boyle","tag-kyle-muller","tag-relief-pitching","tag-ross-stripling","tag-sean-murphy","tag-william-contreras"],"modified_by":"Evan Mazza, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}