Oakland's latest 40-man move is a quiet one on paper but it caps a weird little arc for Joey Meneses. The A's designated him for assignment before outrighting him, and because Meneses has a career outright already on his record, he's got the option to decline the assignment and simply hit free agency instead.
MLB Trade Rumors broke the outright news as part of Oakland's roster churn during the deadline stretch.
The move ends a brief major league look that never really got going. Meneses signed a minor league deal with the A's over the offseason and got his contract selected onto the big league roster back in June, only to bounce between Oakland and Triple-A Las Vegas a couple times after that. When it was all said and done, he appeared in just 9 games for the A's and went 3-for-20 at the plate — not nearly enough to hold down a roster spot on a team trying to sort out its long-term first base picture.
That's the frustrating part for Meneses, because the bat was very much still working in the minors. He hit .346/.396/.546 with 12 home runs across 331 plate appearances at Triple-A Las Vegas, numbers that look like a guy who should be getting more at-bats somewhere, not fewer. The gap between his Triple-A production and his brief MLB trial is the whole story here.
For anyone who remembers 2022, this is a strange place for Meneses to land at 34. He was the feel-good story that year in Washington, mashing his way into everyday duty with the Nationals after being called up in August and finishing with a .324 average and an All-Star-caliber second half that had people wondering why he wasn't in the actual All-Star Game. That version of Meneses looked like a late-blooming middle-of-the-order bat. The version now getting outrighted by a rebuilding A's club is a reminder of how fast a journeyman's window can close in this league.
Now it's on Meneses to decide whether he wants to stick in the Oakland org on a minor league deal or test the open market again. Given the Triple-A numbers, some team looking for veteran right-handed pop and organizational depth at first base should have interest — the question is whether that interest ever turns into another real big league opportunity.