A's call up No. 5 prospect Lawrence Butler
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The A’s kicked off a youth movement following the All-Star break by calling up their top two position player prospects in Tyler Soderstrom and Zack Gelof.
They're being joined by another promising young talent.
Lawrence Butler -- ranked as Oakland’s No. 5 prospect by MLB Pipeline -- was called up to the Majors ahead of Friday’s series opener against the Nationals in Washington. To make room on the roster for Butler, Tony Kemp was placed on the paternity list.
Butler, 23, electrified during his first big league Spring Training by displaying an energetic style of play.
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“Lawrence has come in and really left an impression all around,” manager Mark Kotsay said during Spring Training in March. “I see a lot of myself when I was 22 coming to Major League camp and wanting to leave an impression. He’s definitely done that already. ... The excitement. The enthusiasm. It’s fun to watch.”
A strong showcase of those skills at Double-A Midland earned Butler a promotion last month to Triple-A Las Vegas, where the success has continued. Between the two levels, Butler is hitting .284 with an .825 OPS, 15 home runs, 19 doubles, 70 RBIs and 21 stolen bases.
Butler, who came up through former Major League outfielder Marquis Grissom’s Baseball Association, participated in several MLB Develops programs as a youth, including both the RBI World Series and Elite Development Invitational in 2016.
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Those tournaments are where A’s scouts first began to take notice of Butler’s talents before Oakland selected him in the sixth round of the 2018 MLB Draft out of Westlake High School in Atlanta.
As part of the next wave of young players which the A’s anticipate will make a big impact at the end of the club's current rebuild, Butler even coined a nickname for the group during Spring Training: The New Oakland.
With Soderstrom, Gelof and now Butler coming up, that next wave is slowly starting to materialize at the Major League level.
“It’s been a blast for all of us just being able to experience all this by playing together and creating a bond,” Butler said in March. “Your tickets are going to be worth buying. That’s what I’d like to tell the A’s fans.
"You will not be wasting your money coming to see us play.”
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