It's no secret that the Athletics pitching staff as a whole didn't have a ton of success in 2026, finishing with a team ERA of 5.53, ranking them 29th in MLB ahead of just the Colorado Rockies (5.59 ERA). The A's also held a team ERA of 6.37 at home (30th) in West Sacramento, which led to a disappointing 32-49 record in the friendly confines. 

The A's will be after pitching this winter. They have a number of positions on the offensive side locked in already, so there isn't much work that can be done around the diamond outside of working on the team's bench or depth options. 

That will leave whoever ends up being the A's new president of baseball operations to focus on figuring out what kinds of skills the team should target this winter, either via free agency or trade. 

The skill that any pitcher the A's target has to have is the ability to throw strikes when needed. Manager Mark Kotsay has already said that the key for the club will be to limit free passes next year, pointing to the success the Chicago Cubs had in 2026 — which included a postseason berth — while giving up the second-most home runs in baseball. The A's gave up the most.

Chicago also added arguably the best defense in baseball to the equation. 

One big difference between the two clubs was that Chicago's staff held a walk rate of 8.2%, ranking them 9th in baseball, while the A's were one of just four clubs in double digits with a 10% walk rate, ranking them 27th. 

Fewer runners on base means fewer runs allowed, even when home runs are surrendered. If pitchers are around the zone more, they'll also get more swing-and-miss or weak contact on close pitches, rather than batters being allowed to sit back and wait for an offering to crush. 

Limiting walks also means conserving pitches and getting deeper into games, which addresses another need for the club, which is to gather up reliable innings. 

While Luis Severino wasn't the ace of the A's staff, he was able to get through five innings most starts, and that reliability makes it easier to know how to deploy a bullpen on a game-by-game basis. It also gives the relief pitchers a breather. 

Throwing strikes will help keep runs off the board and the bullpen more fresh. 

The other key trait the A's should target, though not as much as someone who can find the strike zone, is a ground-ball pitcher. The A's play in a hitter-friendly ballpark, and as we've seen in the team's transition from Oakland to West Sacramento, not knowing how a ballpark will play can lead to awful results. 

During that transition, then-GM David Forst joked a couple of times that ground balls rarely leave the ballpark. It's true, and with the A's knowing how Sutter Health Park plays already and the unknowns of the new ballpark in Las Vegas, having arms that can generate ground balls and/or weak contact would go a long way toward improving the staff as a whole.

The A's also ranked last in baseball in ground-ball rate at 38%, had the third-highest fly-ball rate in MLB at 41.4%, and the second-highest home run to fly-ball ratio at 13.9%. That's more fly balls than most teams and more of those fly balls turning into home runs than all but one team. 

Keeping the ball out of the air would seem like a prudent strategy. 

The A's could also target strikeout pitchers, given that keeping the ball out of play is also a good strategy to limit runs, but the types of pitchers with good strikeout stuff that the A's can typically target generally also come with big-time walk concerns. The club finished with a strikeout rate of 21.2% on the season, ranking 21st.

Combining ground balls with strikes would provide the A's with a higher ceiling in 2027, without having to break the bank in a substantial way.