It was always going to be tough to find room for Renato Nuñez when he came off the disabled list. He's out of options, so the A's were either going to have to keep him on the roster or waive him and hope nobody put in a claim. Despite the presence of Mark Canha, who still has options, Trayce Thompson, who the team just got on waivers, and Franklin Barreto, who would leave the team without a backup infielder for a day but who has options and who in any event is going to be replaced by Chad Pinder shortly anyway, the A's went the waiver route on Nuñez and lost him to division rival ("rival") Texas.

"Why not option Mark Canha" is the obvious question, but the equally obvious answer is "because he's going to get optioned on Tuesday when Trevor Cahill comes back," so if you replace Canha with Nuñez now, all you're doing is delaying by two days the necessity of waiving Nuñez, since it's fair to assume that Jake Smolinski and Trayce Thompson are both going to stick around, seeing how your fourth outfielder needs to be able to play center, and it isn't clear that Chadwick Hudson Pinder qualifies as "able to play center."

It's unfortunate to lose someone with power potential on waivers, but Nuñez doesn't hit enough to hold down first base and doesn't defend enough to play the other corners. Hell, he may not hit enough to hold down those corners, either, considering the career .301 OBP in Triple-A. We can worry about him being Nelson Cruz, but the odds he gets there are next to nil.

It isn't actually clear how Texas intends to get Nuñez on the 25-man roster, either, since they're also running with an eight-man bullpen, and they're already failing to carry a backup infielder, their bench consisting of Ryan Rua and Carlos Tocci. One suspects the Rangers had a 40-man spot because of the ability to put Tim Lincecum on the 60-day disabled list, and are about to turn around and try to sneak Nuñez through waivers themselves. Even if they manage to keep him on the bench (by optioning Rua, maybe), it would probably only be until Rougned Odor or Elvis Andrus was ready to come back. Which is to say: welcome to that part of your career, Renato Nuñez.