00:00Listen, Jeff Passan of ESPN reported late on Monday night that Gage Jump is getting up to make his Major
00:05League debut with the Athletics.
00:08Gage Jump, left-hander, second-round pick in 2024 at an LSU.
00:13Gage Jump, 23-year-old from Aliso Viejo, California, started his college career at UCLA, transferred to LSU,
00:20and in 2025 was one of the breakout arms in Major League Baseball.
00:24112 innings at a 3-3 ERA, punched out 131, nearly 11 punch-outs per night.
00:30And Jump, with AAA Las Vegas this year, has been good.
00:3438 innings at a 4.5 ERA, the number that jumps out.
00:37In 38 innings, he's punched out 56 guys.
00:42Really since early May of last year, you have been saying, check out Gage Jump.
00:48Check out Gage Jump.
00:49Like a lot of people talking about Jamie Arnold, but like Gage Jump.
00:53And Jump and Arnold combined to probably make the second-best left-handed pitcher tandem in minor league baseball,
00:59along with Snelling and White in Miami.
01:02But Gage Jump is getting up to make his major league debut for a team that has a really fun
01:06offense that lacks pitching at points.
01:08Why can Gage Jump be a net positive for the Athletics?
01:12I mean, we talked about him last year.
01:14It's just, you know, one of my favorite lefties in the minor leagues with the way that he was performing.
01:18And the PCL aspect is always going to be difficult, right, where you can see guys just the ERA is
01:25going to be a bit inflated.
01:26He's coming up on a heater here, too.
01:28And he went out in Reno, which is a really tough place to pitch.
01:32And he went four Shuddy there and struck out six.
01:36And then he followed that up with another start where he went seven innings, four hits, no runs, no walks,
01:42nine Ks.
01:42The command is a little bit of the variable.
01:44When Gage Jump is on, he's filling it up.
01:47There's times where it's a deceptive release.
01:49And we talked about it a lot on the call, but it's part of why I think he's so nasty,
01:52where he drops to start driving.
01:55The arm kind of goes quickly, but then he, like, it's almost like a hesitation.
01:59And then it goes.
02:00So it throws off the timing for the hitter, but sometimes it throws off the timing for him ever so
02:04slightly, too.
02:05It seemed like Jump found some pretty good consistency with it last year.
02:08And I think over the last couple of starts, it's found that this year, and clearly the athletics feel like
02:12he's gotten to a point where he's back in rhythm again.
02:15It's a plus heater that I think plays up even beyond that with the deception.
02:18And you have the rest of the arsenal that looks extremely sharp with just the funkiness from the left side.
02:24This could be one of the better swing and miss guys in their rotation immediately.
02:29And when you look at what he was able to do in the body of work last year, for an
02:33A's team that sees the division as kind of wide open,
02:35it's a great time to bring Jump up because if he struggles a little bit out of the gate, let
02:40him get comfortable, let him develop.
02:41And this is a guy that if you're going to ultimately reach the ceiling of your season this year,
02:44it's going to be because Gage Jump is in there throwing well instead of, you know, maybe a Jacob Lopez
02:50as solid as he was last year.
02:52So I love that they're doing it now.
02:54And I think this is a guy that has middle rotation upside, and it looks like he's not too far
02:58from being able to attain that.
03:00Are they close to legitimate contention?
03:02And I feel bad saying the word legitimate there, but it does feel like the A's are going to kind
03:07of scrap their way into the conversation,
03:10and they're going to win enough eight to six ballgames to be in the conversation.
03:13But at some point, the A's are going to make the pivot from, I guess, like spicy, fun team that's
03:21frisky and will beat you in a weird ballgame to,
03:24oh, man, the A's are like legit threats to win this division and go deep in the American League.
03:28Can Gage Jump kind of help fortify that idea?
03:32I assume there's more that needs to come, like Perkins needs to come, Arnold needs to come.
03:36Like there's plenty of other guys that can help kind of fortify that claim, but they have to get better
03:43pitching-wise.
03:43Can Gage Jump help them push in that direction to be a legitimate contender?
03:47I do think he helps push in that direction just because how often you get to bring up a –
03:53you don't just get to add an arm who has three-plus pitches, you know, from the left side.
03:58It doesn't mean that's going to translate immediately, but we're seeing more and more of these pitchers.
04:01It has. Sometimes it doesn't, especially with lefties, and there's a little bit of a development process there.
04:07But if he is a guy that also fits the bill of being able to make that leap immediately, then
04:11yeah.
04:11I mean, if he's a 3.8 to 4 ERA guy with big strikeout stuff, which, again, we know he
04:17has, that's an upgrade from what they currently have, and that makes their rotation better.
04:21So I think it helps.
04:23They're going to have to just mash their way into it, and I think that's going to come with Tyler
04:29Soderstrom not having a 79 WRC+, Brent Rooker not having a 75.
04:32Like, you have Carlos Cortez out of nowhere.
04:34You have Kurtz and Langlier is looking like one of the better power duos in the big leagues.
04:39And, like, Severino is better this year.
04:42Like, you have the emergence of Ginn.
04:44I can talk myself into this team absolutely, and I think jump only helps raise the ceiling.
04:50He may struggle, so you don't know, but you can dream on a higher-end scenario here instead of just
04:54like a stopgap starter.
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