It's the kind of move that only happens when a season has completely come off the rails. The Athletics dismissed Scott Emerson, their pitching coach since 2017, one day after a 9-1 loss at the White Sox capped off a nine-game losing streak heading into the All-Star break. MLB Trade Rumors confirmed the firing as the news broke Monday, and it landed like exactly what it is: a front office admitting the pitching staff is a disaster and someone has to pay for it.
MLB Trade Rumors confirmed the Athletics moved on from Emerson after nearly a decade on the staff.
The numbers explain the decision better than any statement could. Oakland's team ERA sits at 5.21, next-to-last in the entire majors, ahead of only the Rockies. That's not a slump, that's a full-blown crisis on the mound, and it's been building for weeks. Losing 13 of 14 games heading into the break is the kind of stretch that gets people fired in every sport, and in baseball the pitching coach is almost always first in line when the arms stop performing.
Emerson wasn't some new hire caught in the crossfire, either. He'd been in the organization since 2003, working his way up from a minor league pitching coach to bullpen coach in 2015 before taking over the big-league staff in June 2017. Nearly a decade with one franchise is a long run for any position coach, and it means Emerson had a hand in developing a lot of the arms currently getting shelled every night. That history makes the timing notable, not just the fact that it happened.
Bullpen coach Dan Hubbs steps in as interim pitching coach for the rest of the season, which is its own kind of vote of no confidence in the current group. Promoting from within instead of bringing in outside help suggests this is more of a stopgap than a full reset, but with a 41-55 record and the worst run prevention in the league, stopgaps might be all Oakland has time for right now.
The bigger question is whether firing the pitching coach actually fixes anything. Coaching changes midseason are usually more about sending a message than a magic bullet, and a staff with a 5.21 ERA has problems that run deeper than one voice in the dugout. Still, with the trade deadline bearing down, this is the Athletics signaling they're not just going to run out the same script through August. Expect the roster churn to follow the coaching change soon enough.