It’s a good thing for the A’s that very little is ordinary about Trevor May, who is much more than just a relief pitcher. He’s a Twitch streamer, a YouTuber, an esports entrepreneur, a DJ and even a part-owner of a Fan Controlled Football League team coached and quarterbacked by Johnny Manziel.

In the strangest of ways, it’s made him a uniquely perfect fit in Oakland.

The 100-loss, low-budget A’s and their decrepit home park aren’t really a preferred destination site for MLB free agents. But A’s general manager David Forst didn’t need to do much convincing to sign the 33-year-old New York Mets free agent to a one-year, $7 million contract Friday.

May, it turns out, has had a strange fascination with the A’s since he was a kid growing up in Seattle with a father who idolized Oakland’s 1970s world championship teams. Having both his family as well as his wife’s on the West Coast and many of their friends here in the Bay Area also helped guide his decision.

But the green and gold was the biggest allure.

“There’s always been this affinity for the Oakland A’s organization, from the Moneyball movie to my dad being an A’s fan since he was 18,” May said during a video interview with reporters Monday.

The A’s, in turn, showed their appreciated for the 33-year-old May by making him their highest-paid player for 2023. This despite May playfully compromising his market value in his typical self-deprecating fashion – he posted a choreographed, 30-second video packed with rapid-fire clips of MLB hitters launching blasts off him during his nine-year career.

Some times you just gotta clown yourself.

Time flies when you’re having fun… pic.twitter.com/UGDnpyBxPo

— Trevor May (Not Parody) (@IamTrevorMay) December 8, 2022

“Sometimes you just gotta clown yourself. Time flies when you’re having fun…” May wrote on his Twitter post.

His sense of humor was also on display Tuesday while revealing 12-15 other teams had interest in him in free agency as he looked to rebound from his worst statistical season since 2016. He defined “interest” as his name being mentioned at least once in conversations.

“I’ll give you a little context. My agent also has Jacob deGrom. So, as you can imagine, they were like, “Jake! Jake! Jake! Jake! Jake! Trevor? No.’ That’s kind of where (interest) came from a lot,” May deadpanned.

Actually, heading into last season May had been one of baseball’s better relievers from 2018-21 while carrying a 3.33 ERA over 175.2 innings with 236 strikeouts (an eye-popping 32.6% strikeout rate) while with the Twins and Mets. And, although May’s 2022 season was disappointing overall – he had a 5.04 ERA in 26 innings while missing three months with a stress reaction in his right humerus — he finished the season better than ever.

The 6-foot-5 May paired a dominating, upper 90s rising fastball with an altered changeup grip that created a swing-and-miss pitch to go along with a newly developed hard slider. It resulted in May walking just six and registering 25 strikeouts over his final 16.2 innings last season. It also resulted in May having a lot of fun again in the game.

After going from the Twins to the Mets during his first venture into free agency in 2020, May decided he wanted to try to enjoy himself even more wherever he wound up.

“I was pretty specific about what I was looking for this year,” May said. “I honestly surprised myself with how specific and how strongly I wanted to be in the area. I’m very happy that I was able to stick to my guns a little bit and really go for a place that I felt I was going to be valued and that was gonna be a lot of fun playing.”

Thus, the A’s quickly became a focus. Despite the inherent challenge of competing in Oakland, May always noticed how much fun the A’s seemed to be having. He had already been sold on Oakland after talking with Mets teammates Chris Bassitt and Mark Canha, both of whom told him they loved every aspect of playing with the A’s. They especially enjoyed the easiness with which humor was always welcomed, which further piqued May’s interest.

“If you can’t approach it, at least sometimes, from a point of levity, you’ll just go crazy,” May said.

He helps balance out the stress of playing in the majors by spending hours at a time at least three days per week streaming, which he says is a much-needed creative outlet. May enjoys interacting with friends and random players, many of whom don’t realize his identity even though his Twitch channel has a whopping 190,000 followers.

The gaming, coupled with his love of old-school Bay Area hip-hop artists such as Keak De Sneak, E-40, The Team, The Federation and Too Short, as well as his affiliation with an indoor football league make May just quirky enough to be a familiar character to A’s fans.

His peculiar profile is analogous to those of Stephen Vogt, Liam Hendriks, Sean Doolittle, Brandon McCarthy, Bassitt and Brett Anderson, all of whom became A’s fan favorites for their unpretentiousness, snarky humor and for simply embracing their inner weirdness.

May’s only been with the team for four days, but he’s already deep into the A’s spirit.

“I think there’s a lot of space to be yourself and just be crazy,” May said. “I’m growing my first beard of my life right now because I’m now an Oakland A and I want to have a beard. … And I want to go out and just really lean into the character of just playing baseball.”

He’s also up for all the challenges the young A’s face while trying to compete as the overwhelming underdogs in the stacked AL West.

“I’ve been on two hundred-win teams and one hundred-loss team in my career I know what it’s like to be in all those situations and how quickly things can change. And what a group of hungry young guys all trying to make a name for themselves in the league can do,” May said. “And that’s really exciting. That’s something I want to be a part of.”