Green and Gold Futures Prospect Weekly: Taylor's Rough Week at Triple-A, Kuroda-Grauer Returns to the Bigs
By Ethan Price ·
Green and Gold Futures Prospect Weekly covers the last 7 days of action for the Athletics farm system.
Taylor Runs Into a Wall at Las Vegas
Devin Taylor (AAA, OF, Rank: 6) went 3-for-19 with a double, a home run, one RBI, and two walks across seven games at Triple-A Las Vegas this week, a rough stretch that included eight strikeouts. The power at least showed up in the home run, his 26th of the season across all levels, but the contact rate was not there. Over the last 30 days at Triple-A, he is slashing .277/.381/.446 with a 14.4 percent walk rate and a 36.1 percent strikeout rate, and the contact rate has dropped to 66.1 percent during that stretch compared to 69.6 percent across the full season. The swing rate of 40.7 percent over that span remains disciplined and well below the league average, so the walks are still coming, but the strikeouts against upper-level arms have climbed sharply from what he posted at Double-A Midland earlier this year.
The broader 2026 season still reads well: a combined .308/.411/.493 line across 647 plate appearances with 23 home runs, a 14.8 percent walk rate, and on-base production that makes a corner bat viable even when the average fluctuates. The Double-A numbers (.323/.409/.534 with 14 home runs in 325 plate appearances) were genuinely strong and underscore that the jump to Triple-A has brought a real contact challenge. The profile is a 55 hit tool and 60 power in left field, with the projection as an everyday bat if the swing decisions against breaking balls tighten at this level. The week was also colored by a collision with teammate Ryan Lasko during a game in Frisco, an incident that left Lasko hospitalized with fractured vertebrae. That context matters: this was not a normal seven-game run. The strikeout concern at Triple-A is worth watching as he closes out the season, but the underlying approach and power production have been consistent enough across 2026 that one rough week does not reframe the outlook.
Quick Hits
- Joshua Kuroda-Grauer (MLB, 3B, Rank: 12) · returned from the 60-day injured list on September 22, activated by the Athletics after missing nearly two months following emergency surgery for a ruptured testicle suffered in late July. He has gone 0-for-3 with a strikeout across two games since the return, so there is no production yet to evaluate. Before the injury, he had posted a .347/.400/.455 line across 225 plate appearances at Triple-A Las Vegas and a .397/.415/.556 mark in 65 plate appearances at the big-league level, which made his placement on the IL one of the more costly roster developments of the Athletics' summer. Getting back on the field in September, even in a limited role, is the meaningful part here; the production can wait.