{"id":571502,"date":"2026-02-06T22:41:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T22:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/571502\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T22:41:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T22:41:11","slug":"athletics-to-sign-scott-barlow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/571502\/","title":{"rendered":"Athletics To Sign Scott Barlow"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletics and right-hander Scott Barlow<\/a><\/strong> have agreed to a deal, reports Robert Murray of FanSided<\/a>. It\u2019s a one-year pact with a $2MM guarantee for the Warner Sports Management client and performance bonuses worth $1.3MM. The A\u2019s have a full 40-man roster and will need a corresponding move to make this official.<\/p>\n

Barlow, 33, has a fairly established profile at this point in his career. He walks too many guys but is still a somewhat effective setup guy thanks to his ability to strike guys out, induce ground balls and limit damage. He\u2019s also quite durable, having never appeared on the major league injured list in his career.<\/p>\n

Over the past three years, Barlow has thrown 191 1\/3 innings for the Royals, Padres, Guardians and Reds. He has allowed 4.28 earned runs per nine. He gave free passes to a huge 13% of batters faced but also punched out opponents at a 26.3% clip and kept the ball on the ground at a 44.1% pace. Statcast has considered his average exit velocity and hard hit rate to be 90th percentile or better in each of those three seasons. He earned 16 saves and 42 holds in that time. He throws his sweeper more than any other pitch but also features a four-seamer, slider, curveball and sinker.<\/p>\n

The A\u2019s have been rebuilding recently and while they have seen a lot of success when it comes to graduating position players, the pitching lags behind. The club had a collective 4.71 ERA last year, putting them ahead of just the Angels, Nationals and Rockies. Playing in a hitter-friendly minor league park is certainly playing a role there but there\u2019s clearly room for improvement.<\/p>\n

The club hasn\u2019t been super active in adding to the pitching staff this offseason. Perhaps that\u2019s due to pitchers not wanting to play in Sutter Health Park or maybe it\u2019s because the A\u2019s have been focusing their resources on extending their young core. Whatever the reason, their only other addition of note so far was to sign Mark Leiter Jr.<\/a><\/strong> to a one-year deal worth $2.85MM, so the A\u2019s have invested less than $5MM in upgrading the pitching staff so far.<\/p>\n

Perhaps more investments will be forthcoming. For now, Barlow and Leiter project to be the two most experienced arms in the bullpen. Younger guys like Hogan Harris<\/a><\/strong>, Justin Sterner<\/a><\/strong>, Elvis Alvarado<\/a><\/strong>, Brady Basso<\/a><\/strong>, Mitch Spence<\/a><\/strong>, Grant Holman<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and others will also be in the mix.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Frank Bowen IV, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletics and right-hander Scott Barlow have agreed to a deal, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. It\u2019s a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":571503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[1266,10631,62,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-571502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-scott-barlow","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116026099894931863","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}