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The ongoing saga that is the Oakland Athletics franchise and their planned move to Las Vegas has become the darkest cloud looming over Major League Baseball. Oakland fans are devastated, the team has become unwatchable and it’s unclear when or how the Athletics will return to competence on the field.
Thursday, a piece of the puzzle seemingly fell into place. The A’s will play their 2025-27 seasons, with 2028 a possibility as well, in Sutter Health Park in Sacramento, the team announced. It’s a stadium with a 14,000 seat capacity, owned by the San Francisco Giants’ AAA affiliate, with some of the smallest dimensions allowable under MLB regulations.
Regardless of where they’ll be playing and regardless of how the public might feel about the people in charge, one thing is certain about this team as currently constructed – they’re the worst team we’ve seen in at least a full generation. It’s the worst roster in MLB with the lowest payroll in the league, a bottom five farm system and a general lack of hope for the future.
Therefore, in the wake of Thursday’s news, let’s try to parse what we actually know about the Athletics as a baseball team, ostensibly one still trying to win games. How did they get to be this bad? What, if anything, can turn them around? Is there any evidence moving to Sacramento, Las Vegas or anywhere else will help? It’s all a lot to take in, but we’ll do our best to find some answers.
The 2024 Athletics are really, really bad
Let’s start here. The roster this team has built, the production they’ve received on the field and the pipeline they’ve assembled to improve the future have all crumbled. Meanwhile, as has become the norm, you could easily build an All-Star team of former Athletics on other major league teams.
Just in the past four seasons, the A’s have let Matt Olson, Marcus Semien, Matt Chapman, Sean Murphy, Mark Canha, Chris Bassitt, Sean Manaea, Frankie Montas and a plethora of others walk out the door. The prospect returns they’ve received for the players they’ve traded away has amounted to little and right now, the A’s have zero dollars committed to long-term contracts next season.
Yes, zero. It’s all expiring free agents and players not yet eligible for free agency, meaning no one on the team knows how long they’ll be there or who their teammates will be. Every player on the field is fighting to make it in the majors at the same time and eventually, that leads to mistakes.
Just look at the five errors the A’s made Monday night at the Coliseum. Or look at their 3-for-29 batting line with runners in scoring position against the Boston Red Sox. No one is able to play the game with any confidence because they know they’re just fighting for survival, not to mention the burden of all the rumors and breaking news stories about the franchise’s future. It’s trial by fire for everyone on the roster.
What the A’s need is beyond their control
The A’s total 2024 payroll is approximately $61 million, with $82 million in total allocations when accounting for benefits and minor league salaries. That $82 million figure is less than just what the second-cheapest team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, are paying for their big league roster alone. And the team is paying less for its own roster less than it was a full 17 years ago.
Owner John Fisher plans to increase the team’s payroll to $170 million by 2028, when the A’s hope to make their Las Vegas debut, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported on Fair Territory Thursday. That is the only change that matters for this franchise. Investing money into the roster is what will drive fans to the ballpark–and enable the team to put more money back into its facilities in the future.
Now, that proposition requires us to take Fisher at his word that more money will indeed be invested. A very reasonable question would be to wonder why it hasn’t already been invested into creating a roster worth watching. But until that investment comes, the team will continue to flounder. That’s about the only certainty that we’ve learned from this entire spectacle.
No evidence moving the team will improve the Athletics
This might be the hardest part of the equation for a neutral observer to wrap their head around. The A’s are getting $67 million from NBC Sports California for the rights to carry their games in the 7th-largest media market in America, via John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle. They’ll have to renegotiate when moving to Sacramento, the 20th-largest market, and are sure to make a decent chunk less.
And Las Vegas is the 40th-largest media market. So for all the excitement the A’s can drum up about a new stadium and the fans they’re confident they can attract to come to the games, they’ve got to also figure out how to make almost every household in the Vegas area watch their games on TV, because they’re moving to a place with hundreds of thousands of fewer eyeballs to capture.
And ultimately, that is what this all comes back to. This entire saga has been about money, but the fans don’t care about the profit margins of billionaires. Lifelong Oakland A’s fans who have grown up with a team in their city for the past 57 years are seeing that team taken away from them, simply because the city and team could never agree on how much each should spend on a new stadium.
Oakland fans are some of the finest in baseball. They’re passionate, loyal and bring a distinct local flair to the ballpark environment, especially when the team is anywhere near contention. That fanbase is now being left in the dust, which will hurt for as long as the city remains without a team. The onus is on the Athletics and MLB to prove that sacrifice is one worth making.
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