Max Muncy and Dylan Covey have a bit in common besides that “y” at the end of their name.

Phil Gurnee ♦ June 14, 2018 ♦ Leave a comment

Max Muncy and Dylan Covey were both drafted fairly high by the Oakland Athletics and both are now producing at the major league level for other organizations while Oakland got little to nothing in return.

Most Dodger fans by now, know that Max Muncy was cut loose by the Oakland Athletics after being drafted by them in the 5th round of the 2012 draft. Muncy made it to the major leagues for Oakland by 2015 but was unable to impress with a Mendoza type stat line. Muncy followed that up in 2016 with a tepid AAA performance and had an even worse stint in the major leagues.  It made perfect sense for Oakland to cut ties with Muncy following the 2016 season.  With Max Muncy now the leading OPS hitter in the NL with at least 150 PA, and the ability to play 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and the outfield I can only imagine the regret going on right now in the Oakland front office.

I expect most Dodger fans have never heard of Dylan Covey and I only recently stumbled upon him because of a game against the Red Sox I happened to catch last week.  Dylan Covey was a 4th round pick for Oakland in the 2013 draft. He had been drafted in the first round by the Brewers in 2010 but elected to deal with type one diabetes and go to college.  As a college pitcher, Covey took his time moving up the Oakland ladder and by the summer of 2016 was still in AA.  In the fall of 2016, Oakland had to make a decision about whether to add Covey to the 40 man roster and protect him from the rule 5 draft or leave him unprotected. They chose to leave him unprotected and the Chicago White Sox picked him up.  Because Covey was a rule five pick he had to stay on the White Sox major league roster all year and he took his lumps. By the time 2017 had ended, it didn’t look like Oakland had made a mistake by leaving him unprotected as Covey ended the season with a 7.70 ERA and his FIP was nearly identical.  Covey didn’t make the team this spring and started out in AAA but once some injuries hit the White Sox rotation he was called up and has been the ………………wait for it…………….the ace of the White Sox since he joined the rotation on May 23rd.  It is a small sample size but his latest victory was over the Cleveland Indians, giving him three straight victories over three of the best teams in baseball this year, the Brewers, Red Sox, and Indians.  To be sure he has not been dominant but I like how his innings have increased with each start from 4 to 5 to 6 to 7 over his past four starts. He has yet to give up a home run. He won’t keep this up but the scouting reports have said the reason for his newfound success is that he ditched his four-seamer for a two-seamer and not only increased his velocity a few ticks but is getting over a ground ball rate over 60%.

Rk    Date Opp  Rslt    Dec  IP  H ER BB SO HR  ERA Str
2    May23 BAL W11-1 W(1-1) 7.0  6  1  1  8  0 3.46  65
3    May28 CLE         L6-9 4.1  5  2  3  3  0 3.63  48
4     Jun3 MIL         W6-1 5.0  4  0  3  7  0 2.82  62
5     Jun8 BOS  W1-0 W(2-1) 6.0  3  0  1  7  0 2.22  56
6    Jun13 CLE  W3-2 W(3-1) 7.0 10  2  0  5  0 2.29  60

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/14/2018.

Oakland has one of the tighter budgets in baseball and they can ill afford to simply give away major league talent.  Right now, Billy Beane should be evaluating his minor league developers and evaluators and figure out why they weren’t able to see any of this coming.  Maybe they simply don’t like players whose last name end in “y”?

The Dodgers and White Sox are glad they didn’t.