There's a version of this story that fits neatly into the standard baseball template. A team is falling apart, so the general manager takes the fall. Tidy, familiar, done a hundred times a decade. Except almost nothing about the Athletics fits neatly into anything anymore, and David Forst's exit is the perfect example of why.
The club announced Friday that it and Forst had "mutually agreed to part ways," ending his run of nearly three decades with the organization. Assistant general manager Dan Feinstein was named interim GM for the remainder of the 2026 season, with the A's promising a "comprehensive search" for a permanent replacement. Owner John Fisher's statement was warm to the point of eulogy: "David has been an integral part of the A's and our success for nearly three decades. His leadership, dedication and commitment to this team have helped shape our baseball operations department and position us for the future."
Notice what that statement doesn't do. It doesn't explain why a man Fisher calls integral to the franchise's success is leaving with roughly a season and a half to go before the promised land in Las Vegas.
The parting that isn't quite a parting
Start with the language, because the language is a fight. The A's say mutual. The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal, Cody Varnes and Melissa Lockard have reported this was a firing. USA Today reported that Forst and his family didn't want to move to Las Vegas in 18 months, and ESPN's Alden Gonzalez reported that Forst "was never planning to move to Vegas with the club, according to sources, a circumstance that played a part in both sides moving on." Evan Drellich had flagged as far back as the spring that Forst was comfortable in California.
So which is it? My honest read is all of it, at once. A GM who wasn't going to make the move anyway becomes a lot easier to let go when the team is losing at the rate this one is. The results gave everyone permission. That's messy and human, and it's a lot more believable than any single clean narrative.
What makes the timing land like a joke is that less than a year ago, Forst signed a new contract tied to steering the club through its transition, and told reporters, plainly, "I will be back in 2026." He isn't going to finish 2026.
Forst's actual record, and who wrote it
The part everyone piling on tends to skip: Forst spent his entire front-office life with this organization. He joined as a scout in 2000, became assistant GM in 2004, and took over as general manager in 2015 when Billy Beane moved upstairs. His own farewell line, repeated identically everywhere: "It was truly an honor to spend the last 27 years with the A's, especially the last 11 as the GM."
Over those years the A's made the playoffs three times, back to back to back from 2018 through 2020, with 97-win seasons in 2018 and 2019. They won exactly one AL West title under him, in the shortened 2020 season, and won a single postseason series across those trips. So no, this wasn't a run of deep October glory. Fair criticism.
