With the No. 11 pick in the 2025 MLB Draft, the Athletics selected left-hander Jamie Arnold out of Florida State. Not even a year later, he's looking ready for the next step in his development after putting together a strong string of starts in Double-A that have culminated in six scoreless innings of one-hit ball on June 25. 

This month he has made four starts, tossing at least six innings in three of them, and has racked up a total of 23 1/3 innings, given up 16 hits, 10 walks, hit three batters, and struck out 21. All of that combines for a 2.31 ERA with a .193 batting average against and a 1.11 WHIP. 

Not a bad line just a couple of months into his first full pro season. 

On the season, Arnold hasn't been quite as stellar, posting a 4.24 ERA with a 1.59 WHIP and a .278 BAA across 70 innings. This does seem to suggest that he's largely figuring things out this month, however. 

One team has been giving him fits recently, and that is the Amarillo Sod Poodles, the Double-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks. 

Since the beginning of May, Arnold has made three of his nine starts against Amarillo — all in separate series — and has combined for 16 1/3 innings, giving up 26 hits, 15 earned runs, seven walks, and 11 strikeouts. That comes out to an 8.27 ERA against this one team. 

In his other six starts since the beginning of May, Arnold has given up just nine earned runs across 32 1/3 innings, good for a 2.51 ERA. 

Arnold will be an interesting test case to see how the A's are developing their high-end pitchers. Given that he's another talented player who is nearly ready to make an impact so shortly after being drafted, this could go one of a couple ways. 

The first is that Arnold gets promoted to Triple-A Las Vegas sooner rather than later. We've seen the A's be aggressive in promoting draftees Jacob Wilson and Nick Kurtz in recent years, and they have both worked out well for the A's.

That said, Arnold is obviously a pitcher, and the franchise has typically stayed away from top-of-draft pitching picks, so the track record for their development isn't nearly as long. 

He could earn a promotion as early as next week if the A's want, with the idea that he could potentially be helpful to the big-league club down the stretch if they're still in the hunt for the postseason. In order to reach that benchmark in a couple of months, he would need time at the highest level of the minors. 

The other route they could take would be to keep him in Double-A, getting the reps he needs, and then promoting him straight to Sacramento when the front office deems him ready for a look. This would likely mean that he would be kept in Midland for a while longer, perhaps getting the call around the trade deadline. 

This is something that could be in consideration for the A's, as we talked about in this week's Green and Gold Standard, after manager Mark Kotsay's eyes were opened by the challenges of pitching at the altitude in Las Vegas. 

While promoting pitchers straight from Double-A may not be the norm for the A's, Arnold could be the exception to that rule — especially if he keeps pitching like this, and the A's continue to float around the postseason hunt. 

For what it's worth, the club decided to start Gage Jump in Triple-A this season, and after some early struggles with the Aviators, he found his way and was promoted to the A's active roster shortly thereafter. He's also looked like the ace of the staff since his call-up, so it's hard to argue with the process that got him there. 

The one last complicating factor could be the looming lockout, which has the potential to upend the 2027 season and throw the minor-league season — and a year's worth of development — in flux. Perhaps that leads to slightly more urgency from the A's than we're accustomed to seeing. 

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