The A's have been a disaster on the mound all year, and on July 13 the front office decided somebody had to answer for it. Pitching coach Scott Emerson, who had held the job since 2017, was let go with the team mired in a nine-game losing streak heading into the break. MLB Trade Rumors broke the news, and it didn't take long for the rest of the baseball world to pile on.
Athletics Fire Pitching Coach Scott Emerson t.co/lqDOjTyfCp
This isn't a guy who just showed up and flopped. Emerson has been in the organization since 2002, working his way up through Modesto, Stockton, Midland and Sacramento before becoming the big-league bullpen coach in 2014 and getting the pitching coach promotion in 2017. He was around for the good stretch too — the A's staffs he ran were top-half in ERA during the 2018, 2019 and 2020 playoff seasons. That's the version of Emerson the front office once trusted to develop arms.
Then the roster stopped cooperating. According to reporting on the move, Oakland's ERA ranked 27th in baseball in 2025, 25th in 2024, dead last at 29th in 2023 and 24th in 2022 — a four-year stretch of bottom-of-the-league pitching that finally caught up with him. This season the staff's ERA has sat around 5.21, worst in the AL and ahead of only the Rockies league-wide. Nine straight losses walking into the All-Star break was the breaking point.
The struggling A's shake up the coaching staff. t.co/YHUOFqgdWI
Bullpen coach Dan Hubbs is stepping in as interim pitching coach for the rest of 2026, per multiple reports. It's the classic in-season move — promote from within, buy some stability, worry about a permanent hire in the offseason. But swapping voices doesn't fix stuff, velocity, or a lineup that isn't scoring enough to cover for a shaky rotation.
The bigger question is whether this is a scapegoat move or the start of a real organizational shake-up. Firing a pitching coach midseason rarely turns a bottom-five staff into a good one overnight — it's more of a message to the clubhouse, and to ownership, that the losing has consequences. With Oakland still building out its future home and trying to keep fans engaged during a wandering, transitional stretch for the franchise, another lost summer on the mound is the last thing this team needed heading into the trade deadline.