Three series into the season, this relatively inexperienced hodge-podge of an Oakland Athletics roster seems mentally fatigued. The defense has underperformed, the pitching staff has been absolutely throttled, and the offense has executed vanishing acts rivaling whoever Tony Kemp saw covering first base toward the end of Easter Sunday’s game.
To add salt in the wound, Seth Brown, one of Oakland’s top producers on offense last season, was added to the 10-Day Injured List after sustaining an oblique injury on a check swing in Saturday’s loss against Tampa Bay.
The reasonable thinking would be to replace Brown with another outfielder, but the A’s went in a different direction.
Kevin Smith has garnered a sort of cult following since being sent down to Triple-A Las Vegas last season after posting pretty abysmal numbers in a short major league stint. In 47 games with the A’s last season, Smith posted just a .180 batting average with a pair of home runs and four stolen bases.
Fans seemed to quickly sour on Smith, who was featured as one of three players returned in exchange of former-All-Star and multiple-time Gold Glove Winner Matt Chapman the previous offseason.
The other two players in that trade haven’t exactly captured the imagination of A’s fans either. Gunnar Hoglund ranks fourteenth in the A’s Top Prospects rankings but has seen limited action after attempting to work back from Tommy John Surgery. Kirby Snead is, well, Kirby Snead, or whatever his QAnon screen name is this season.
That leaves Kevin Smith, whose mid-season demotion see who seemed to drive a premature final nail into the coffin of the Matt Chapman deal, deeming it a lost cause regardless of how hot or cold Matt Chapman was in Toronto.
Though, at first, it seemed that Kevin Smith would fall into obscurity in a Las Vegas Aviator lineup featuring more intriguing names that had yet to break into the big leagues, Smith began to hit.
Not just hit, but seriously go on a tear.
In the final weeks of the season, Kevin Smith seemed to put up nothing but absurd stat lines: hitting for the cycle, going 5-for-5, having multiple multi-home-run games. He continued to swing that same hot bat into the Spring, going 17-for-43 (.395) with a .469 OBP, 2 HR, and 15 RBI, including a monster walk-off grand slam that brought out about as much excitement as a Spring Training game can.
When he missed breaking camp, apparently being the final cut to make room for Brent Rooker, according to Mark Kotsay, Smith was sent back to Triple-A where he, you guessed it, hit more home runs.
He has hit five home runs in his first seven games this season.
He has sixteen in his last twenty-three Triple-A games.
Kevin Smith’s addition to the major league club to temporarily replace Seth Brown is not going to fix all of the issues that the A’s had exposed in this last series against Tampa Bay, no. But his grit and determination to overcome the obstacles he has faced is the kind of inspiration that this directionless squad might need.
“At the end of last year, I was working on trying to be more stable and get some better pitches to hit,” Smith told reporters last month. “But ending so well, I just kind of wrote down everything I could about what I was doing, what I was feeling, my pregame routine, what I was looking for in the box, and just tried to be as consistent with it as I could.”
Smith’s mentality has worked at the Triple-A level, and it’s something that could work at the major league level if he is given a chance to apply it. He checks all of the boxes for things that the A’s have struggled with lately: consistent defense, aggressiveness on the base paths, and an ability to be selective at the plate that has rewarded him with big hits.
In addition, he offers positional versatility—perhaps more so than any other player on the major league roster—having played all four infield positions as well as the two corner outfield positions in his professional career.
The answer is not clear on how the A’s plan to divvy up playing time among a very crowded infield that includes Aledmys Díaz, Nick Allen, Tony Kemp, and Jace Peterson. It is not clear how many opportunities Kevin Smith will have to showcase the improvements he has made.
But Smith has proven that he at least deserves a shot.
Hopefully, his power can provide a spark for a struggling offense and that his story can refocus a team that desperately needs to get back on track.
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