It was noticeable to see Brown sitting against a right-hander on Opening Day in favor of Miguel Andujar, but the 32-year-old slugger is in there as the left fielder against righty Luis Castillo on Friday. He’ll bat sixth, sandwiched between Tyler Soderstrom and Gio Urshela.

The expectation had been that Brown and Miguel Andujar would form a platoon in left field with Brown seeing the strong side at-bats, but instead it’s Andujar in there and batting fifth against Gilbert on Thursday evening. Any limited value that fantasy managers in deeper leagues were hoping to extract from Brown disappears completely if he’s not even a regular against right-handed pitching.

He did have a 413-foot drive to center that would have been a homer much of the time, but not here. The A’s are planning to give Brent Rooker some outfield time this season. That will probably lead to fewer at-bats for Brown, assuming that Brown doesn’t have a big rebound in store. The 32-year-old did finish strong last season, but he has a 92 OPS+ the last two seasons; he’s very much a fringe player at this point.

Given that they were opening their wallets anyway, we’d argue that the A’s should have tried to upgrade from Brown in the outfield over the winter. He was quite good after returning from a stint in the minors last summer, hitting .271/.312/.448 in his final 61 games, but that still leaves him with a 92 OPS+ the last two years and he just doesn’t have a very high ceiling at age 32.