Sam Fuld Declines Offer To Become A’s President Of Baseball Operations

By Mark Polishuk | at October 10, 2026 11:57am CDT Phillies president of baseball operations Sam Fuld has declined the Athletics’ offer to become the team’s new president of baseball operations, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports. Fuld’s name surfaced in connection to the A’s job earlier this week , but Fuld has now taken himself out of the running and will stay in Philadelphia.

Nine names have been linked to the A’s job, though Passan ( in another post ) echoes an earlier report from The Athletic’s Patrick Mooney and Ken Rosenthal stating that Cardinals assistant general manager Rob Cerfolio is expected to stay in St. Louis rather than pursue the top job in Sacramento.

Passan describes both Cerfolio and Red Sox assistant GM Taylor Smith as finalists in the search, and it is unclear how many other names were on the Athletics’ short list besides Fuld. Fuld spent the last of his eight Major League seasons with the Athletics in 2015, and after retiring from playing in 2017, he joined the Phillies organization in November 2017.

Beginning as a player information coordinator, Fuld served in that role until he was promoted to the role of general manager in December 2020. This put Fuld behind only PBO Dave Dombrowski on the Phils’ decision-making depth chart, though an interesting twist occurred in 2024 when Fuld took a leave of absence to pursue an MBA at Wharton.

Fuld returned as Philadelphia’s president of business operations this year after attaining his degree, and Preston Mattingly has been the GM under Dombrowski over the last two years. Dombrowski is expected to receive another contract extension once his current deal is up after the 2027 campaign.

Since Dombrowski is 70 years old, there has been speculation that either Fuld or Mattingly is being groomed as Dombrowski’s successor. Given Fuld’s pivot to business rather than baseball operations, the Phillies’ plan might well be to have both Fuld and Mattingly stay on to each run one side of the organization.

This longer-term path could be one of the reasons Fuld turned down the A’s, beyond any number of possible other considerations. It could be that Fuld didn’t want to uproot his family to move across the country, or perhaps he wasn’t keen on the inherent uncertainty facing the Athletics as they prepare to move to Las Vegas, or maybe it was something as mundane as Fuld and the A’s not seeing eye-to-eye on contract terms.

Whatever the situation, the Athletics find themselves still looking. The A’s were reportedly planning to have the PBO position filled within a week’s time, but that timeline may be adjusted now that Fuld (presumably the top choice) has turned down the offer. The remaining list of known candidates beyond Smith and Cerfolio includes former Nationals president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo, former Astros general manager James Click, A’s assistant GM Billy Owens, Cubs assistant GM Jared Banner, Brewers assistant GM Matt Kleine, and Red Sox assistant GM Mike Groopman.

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