A’s Roster Moves: Elvis Andrus released, Neuse back up

A day after we said goodbye to Stephen Piscotty, the Oakland Athletics have made another big release from their roster.

Near the end of his second year with the A’s, Elvis Andrus has been released from the roster. With Andrus approaching a vesting option that would have guaranteed a $15M paycheque from the A’s next year, there was a lot of expectation that a release or reduced playing time was coming for Andrus. Playing in a majority of games since being traded to the A’s for Khris Davis and Jonah Heim, Andrus was never able to fully match his prime years with the Texas Rangers. Over the two year span with the A’s, Elvis had a .241 average and a .639 OPS.

With the release from this contract, Elvis is free to try and sign with another team, and the pesky vesting option would be removed from that contract. Otherwise the A’s are still on the hook for paying out the rest of the year’s salary owed to Andrus (though as part of the trade conditions, the Rangers are covering roughly half of each year’s salary). This all comes a day after Elvis hit his first home run against his former team.

Returning from Triple-A Las Vegas is Sheldon Neuse, who has already played 70 games this year with the A’s. In Neuse’s 25 games with the Aviators he slashed .398/.407/.611 and knocked 5 dingers. Sheldon should slide back into a regular 3B role, moving Vimael Machín into a middle infield position along with Nick Allen and Tony Kemp.