Revisiting Yankees-Athletics transaction history with NYY facing 3 former starters

The New York Yankees are gearing up for a three-game set against the Athletics this weekend and they are lined up against ... three former starting pitchers they once employed. And that's prompted fans to go down memory lane with some of these guys due to the wild coincidence.

Mitch Spence, JP Sears and Luis Severino will be the three scheduled starters for Friday through Sunday. New York has faced all of these guys as a member of the A's, so it's not a complete shock, but all of them on consecutive days is just baffling.

Historically, the Yankees and A's are frequent trade partners and they've poached one another's players in various ways. In the case of Spence, Sears and Severino, we have the trifeca: Rule 5 Draft, trade and free agency signing.

Revisiting Yankees-Athletics transaction history with NYY facing 3 former starters

Mitch Spence

Spence, a former 10th-round pick of the Yankees back in 2019, made his MLB debut last season and has been having a solid 2025. He's got a 3.84 ERA, 3.77 FIP and 1.30 WHIP across 58 2/3 innings. He's mostly been used as a reliever, but he's making his fifth start against New York on Friday night.

The Yankees lost Spence to the A's back in 2023 when Oakland selected him with the first overall pick in the Rule 5 Draft. The Yankees didn't protect the right-hander, who just finished his age-25 season at Triple-A with a 4.47 ERA, 1.32 WHIP and 153 strikeouts across 29 starts (163 innings). With those stats, the Yankees opted not to add him to the 40-man roster and left him exposed to the Rule 5 Draft. They lost him, the A's kept him on their 40-man for the entire 2023 season, and now he's there to stay.

Spence recorded two innings against the Yankees earlier this year and got rocked to the tune of three earned runs on four hits and a walk.

JP Sears

The year before the A's swiped Spence from the Bombers, they received JP Sears in a trade. And that trade is one of the most hated in recent Yankees history. It was the deal that sent Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino to the Bronx at the 2022 trade deadline.

Sears was packaged with Ken Waldichuk, Luis Medina and Cooper Bowman — none of whom panned out. Sears has been the best of the bunch, as he's on pace to make 32 starts for the third straight year. He has a 4.65 ERA and 1.28 WHIP with the A's in 90 games (89 starts), totaling 482 innings.

The Yankees have pretty much tattooed him, as he's 0-4 with a 5.74 ERA and 1.47 WHIP in six starts against them since 2023, but in 2025 he turned in a nice outing featuring five innings of one-run ball in what ended up being a win for the A's.

Luis Severino

And finally, we have Severino, who signed the largest free agent contract in Athletics history this past offseason. Sevy didn't come straight from the Bronx — he had a layover in Queens — but he spent 2015-2023 with the Yanks.

Never in a million years would the Yankees have gone back to the well to pay Severino the $67 million over three seasons that the A's did, but John Fisher needed to spend money to justify the franchise's move to Las Vegas. It's just funny they made that expenditure on one of the most disappointing Yankees players of the Aaron Judge era.

Sevy didn't face the Yanks in 2024 as the Mets strategically shifted their rotation around so he wouldn't have to, but New York destroyed him earlier this year. It was Severino's worst start of 2025 — he allowed eight earned runs on nine hits and two walks over just four innings.

So much for only two good hitters, right?