Rutgers Professional Athletes

Rutgers in the Majors: End of Season Roundup

Joshua Kuroda-Grauer is closing out the 2026 MLB season as one of the most quietly compelling batting stories in the league. The Oakland Athletics shortstop — a Rutgers product — finished the final week hitting above .370, a mark that places him among the top batting averages in baseball as the regular season wraps up.

In Sunday's series finale against Houston, Kuroda-Grauer went 1-for-the-game in a rough team outing, a 2-13 loss for the A's, yet still carried a .373 average on the day before settling at .366 by official game log. The Athletics didn't have much to celebrate in that contest, but Kuroda-Grauer's presence in the lineup remained a bright spot in an otherwise difficult afternoon in Oakland.

Hitting .370-plus at any point deep into a major league season is a legitimate achievement — the kind of number that turns heads in front offices and earns a player serious consideration in end-of-season award conversations. For Kuroda-Grauer, it caps what has been a breakout campaign for a Scarlet Knight whose path from Rutgers to a starting shortstop role in the majors is now impossible to overlook.

The Rest of the Rutgers Roster

Kuroda-Grauer isn't the only Scarlet Knight with a big league footprint this year. Ryan Lasko, his teammate in Oakland, has been patrolling center field for the Athletics — a notable pairing of Rutgers alumni on the same roster. The A's, in the middle of their long-running rebuild, have leaned into developing young talent, and having two Rutgers products contributing at the major league level reflects well on the program's pipeline.

Elsewhere around the league, Nicholas Cimillo has been manning first base for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Trevor Cohen has appeared in the outfield for the San Francisco Giants, and Tony Santa Maria has seen time at third base for the Tampa Bay Rays. On the pitching side, Brian Fitzpatrick (Brewers) and Dale Stanavich (Marlins) have both contributed from the mound this season.

It's a broad footprint for a program that doesn't always get its due in the national college baseball conversation — seven alumni active across six MLB organizations in 2026 is a legitimate credential.

The Bottom Line

Kuroda-Grauer's bat is the story heading into the offseason. A .370+ average at season's end doesn't just earn recognition — it sets the table for contract conversations, award ballots, and a much higher national profile heading into 2027. Rutgers fans have every reason to keep a close eye on Oakland this winter.

FanDaily is an AI-generated newsletter.

Joshua Kuroda-Grauer didn't ease his way back into the lineup — he hit the ground running.

The Rutgers alum was reinstated from the Athletics' 60-day injured list this week, and he's made the most of every at-bat in his return. Kuroda-Grauer opened his comeback with a .403 batting average on Wednesday, September 23, as Oakland edged the Angels 9–7. He kept the momentum going in a 7–3 win over Los Angeles on Thursday, posting a .397 average. By Friday's 5–7 loss to Houston — in which he drew a walk — his average had settled at a still-exceptional .379. For a player returning from a lengthy IL stint with the regular season winding down, those numbers are genuinely striking.

The roster mechanics around his return were notable, too. To clear a spot, the Athletics placed fellow infielder Max Muncy on the 10-day IL with left knee chondromalacia and transferred right-hander J.T. Ginn to the 60-day IL to open a 40-man roster slot. Oakland made multiple moves just to get Kuroda-Grauer back on the field — a signal of how much the organization values what the Scarlet Knight brings to the table.

Sports Illustrated framed the move as the A's reclaiming a key piece of their lineup for the season's final stretch, and the early returns have validated that assessment. For Rutgers fans watching their guy make noise at the MLB level, the timing couldn't be sweeter.

No other Scarlet Knights alumni made notable headlines across MLB this week, though Rutgers has a solid footprint in the league — from Ryan Lasko patrolling center field alongside Kuroda-Grauer in Oakland, to Brian Fitzpatrick on the mound in Milwaukee, Dale Stanavich with the Marlins, Tony Santa Maria holding down the hot corner in Tampa Bay, and Nicholas Cimillo at first base in Pittsburgh. But this week belonged to Kuroda-Grauer, whose return from the IL has been nothing short of a statement.