The 2026 Hall of Fame ballots have been released, comprising of 27 former MLB stars looking for their chance to be immortalized in Cooperstown. Among that group of 27, 15 players will be holdovers from previous years, while 12 new players join them on this year’s ballot. Voting is done by the BBWAA and will be completed by the end of the year. Inductees will be announced on January 20.
Among the list of newcomers to the ballot is former A’s left-hander Gio González, who made his MLB debut with the green and gold in 2008. It would take him a couple of seasons to get his feet under him at the big-league level, but in 2010 and 2011, he combined for a 31-21 record with a 3.17 ERA across 402 2/3 innings of work.
He quickly became arguably the best pitcher on the staff, along with Trevor Cahill, and both were promptly traded in December of 2011. Those trades ended up bringing in a large swath of the roster that would win the AL West in 2012.
In the Cahill (and Craig Breslow) deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks, the A’s received Ryan Cook, Collin Cowgill and Jarrod Parker. Cook was part of the three-headed monster in the A’s bullpen along with Sean Doolittle and Grant Balfour. Parker started games one and five of the ALDS in 2012, going up against Justin Verlander. He’d get the game three start the following year and earn the win.
In exchange for González, the A’s got A.J. Cole, Tommy Milone, Derek Norris and Brad Peacock from the Nationals. Milone and Norris were big parts of the A’s roster, with Milone in the rotation Norris the starting catcher that could rake against left-handers. He had a huge home run in Game 162 that put the A’s ahead for good.
Cole was later traded back to the Washington Nationals, along with Blake Treinen, in 2013 as part of a three-team deal that landed John Jaso with the A’s. Treinen would be traded back to the A’s in 2017 in the Jesús Luzardo deal that landed Doolittle in Washington too. Peacock was traded to Houston as part of the original Jed Lowrie deal.
Gio González finished his 13-year career with a 131-101 record, a 3.70 ERA across 1,933 innings, and racked up 29.8 bWAR. He ended up making two All Star teams (2011, 2012), finished 20th in the NL MVP voting in his first year with the Nationals (2012), and finished third in the NL Cy Young vote that year. He would also finish sixth in the NL Cy Young voting in 2017.
From 2010-2018, he put up a 3.49 ERA with a 117 ERA+ while averaging nearly 187 innings each and every year. His peak may not have been as high as some of his contemporaries, but he was a solid second or third starter in MLB for most of his career.
He’s not likely to make it into the Hall of Fame, but he certainly had a big part to play in A’s history. A number of fans in Oakland will point to that 2012 season as their favorite memory, and while Gio wasn’t directly a part of that season, the trade that sent him to Washington was a big catalyst for that surprising year.
