A’s top prospect gets ready as Bruce Bochy’s Rangers visit West Sacramento
The Athletics were initially disappointed with having the No. 4 pick in last summer’s Major League Baseball draft, but just for kicks, club management and cross-checker scouts quizzed one another.
Who would they pick if the A’s had the No. 1 pick? Most agreed on Nick Kurtz.
Some nine months later, the A’s officially have their man on board. Picked fourth in that 2024 draft, the sturdy 22-year-old, 6-foot-5, 245-pound slugger has soared through the minor leagues and will make his big-league debut this week during a six-game home stand at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento.
Kurtz’s stint in the minors was brief — hardly much longer than one of his moonshot home runs takes to land over a fence. After slugging 61 home runs in college at Wake Forest, Kurtz batted .368 with four home runs in 12 games in Class A and AA in 2024. This spring, he spent just seven games at Single-A Stockton, five at Double-A Midland and 20 with Triple-A Las Vegas before the news broke Monday of his promotion to the A’s.
Kurtz met with the team on Tuesday, dined with them and took batting practice, sending one shot well over the right field fence. He was not activated for Tuesday’s game, the opener of a three-game series against the Texas Rangers, in part to help him better acclimate to his new surroundings, but he could play as early as Wednesday.
“I usually roll my eyes at stories like this,” A’s general manager David Forst said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday afternoon. “It’s easy to say now, and everybody looks smart, but the fact that we were at four, Nick was available, and we had spent six months thinking about the fact that we would have taken Nick at No. 1 overall, everybody felt really good about the process.”
Kurtz clubbed just two home runs as a high school senior for a prep powerhouse in Tennessee, but he found his groove at Wake Forest and right on into the minors. He swatted 11 home runs and batted .336 with 36 RBI in 32 games and became the sixth fastest A’s player in franchise history to make his MLB debut (Mike Morgan made his MLB debut five days after he was drafted in 1978).
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“Living the dream, pretty awesome,” Kurtz said in a media session Tuesday. “Mom and dad got the first call (from me), absolutely. That was the coolest moment.”
He added, “It doesn’t seem real. I was taking classes less than four months ago. It won’t feel real until I step on the field.”
Said A’s manager Mark Kotsay of Kurtz, “He’s a pretty accomplished young hitter, and he’s got an advanced approach. He’s a pretty free, even-keeled kid. We’re going to get to start his Major League career and watch him go out and play.”
Rangers and A’s combine for 8 homers in opener
Texas won Tuesday’s game, 8-5, in front of 10,059 fans, slugging four home runs, including a three-run blast in the fifth inning by Marcus Semien, an infielder who played for the Oakland A’s from 2015 through 2020.
Kurtz will fit right in with the A’s power surge.
The club hit four home runs Tuesday against the Rangers — Miguel Andujar in the second inning, Lawrence Butler in the third, and Luis Urias as well Brent Rooker in the eighth.
What about Soderstrom?
Kurtz is a first baseman, and so is Tyler Soderstrom of the A’s, who entered Tuesday’s action tied for the MLB lead with nine home runs.
Soderstrom, 23, is the A’s 2020 first-round pick who will get a look in left field and at designated hitter, Kotsay and Forst said.
“Tyler has been great through the process,” Kotsay said. “He’s had a remarkable start to the season. It’s not everyday you ask one of your better hitters to make a position move during the season, but Tyler is fully open to doing that.”
Said Soderstrom, a native of Turlock, “Whatever I can do to help the team (get to the postseason), I’m going to do it. Been raised that way since I was a kid.”
He added, “I haven’t played too many games in left field, so it’ll be new to me. I got what it takes and I can handle it and looking forward to getting out there and seeing what happens. But overall, I’m not too worried about it ... (Kurtz) is going to add a great, powerful left-handed bat to our lineup, so it’s a really exciting, great opportunity for him.”
Bochy’s mixed flashbacks of West Sac visits
Rangers manager Bruce Bochy has visited Sutter Health Park several times over the years, the first time in 2001 as the San Diego Padres skipper when his club played the Sacramento River Cats in an exhibition game, a year after Triple-A baseball landed in West Sacramento.
Later, as manager of the San Francisco Giants with whom he won three World Series titles in the 2010s, Bochy was on-site for exhibition games against the River Cats. He has always raved about the fans, venue and vibe.
The 2001 visit was not pleasant for one of this generation’s great managers. He recalled before the game in the Rangers dugout getting rolled in a motorcycle spill.
“I’ll never forget that motorcycle accident and I wasn’t moving around too well, but it was a beautiful park,” Bochy said. “I had a big Indian Chief (motorcycle) and had a bad accident and was on crutches for six weeks to start the season. In 2001, I stayed in the clubhouse (against the River Cats). I couldn’t get out.
“The accident helped retire me from riding a motorcycle because I found out it doesn’t matter whose fault it is.”
Bochy said he is impressed with the upgrades at Sutter Health Park, mandated by MLB for the A’s stay planned for this season and at least the next two.
“I think they’ve done a really nice job with the ballpark and the improvements,” he said. “I was excited to bring our club here to play.”
Kotsay, the A’s manager, teased his old friend Bochy before the game, recalling a story where the big man with the big head crashed into a beam at a game in the late 1980s while playing for the Padres. The two then had a long chat during batting practice, ending with an embrace.
Bochy remembers the Kotsay story well.
“(Manager) Dick Williams had called me to pinch hit,” Bochy said. “Well, I was the next hitter and I’m all the way down there (across the field). So I sprint down there (in the tunnel), and it was dark, and I hit my head and split my head open. I did make it down. I got a base hit, blood everywhere.”
This story was originally published April 22, 2025 at 8:18 PM.