3 years in a 10,000 seat minor league stadium in Sacramento? Is the plan to essentially hide and go dormant with minimal payroll for 3 years, be fine with losing 110 games per season, restock the farm system, and be ready to compete once the new stadium in Oakland is ready?
Not sure how this makes sense. Evidently they couldn't come up with any better options.
Edit to add: Just checked and they have zero payroll obligations beyond this year. 2025 payroll obligations linked. Already just barely over half the payroll of the next team (Pirates) for 2024.
Farm system ranked 25th to 30th depending on who is evaluating. 1 top 100 prospect (64th) per mlb.
Yikes. I should have written 120 losses per season.
(at least not by 2028). Bally's might be looking to back out, and they were a major component of the deal. Fischer has been just terrible at getting these deals done, and his track record on pretty much everything is terrible. They were about 6 months late in bringing any stadium specifics to the table, and the suspicion is that they rushed to the announcement because they would have lost their MLB welfare if they didn't have an agreement in place (they get to keep their welfare for this year since a deal is in place, but who knows when they'll ever break ground).
Right now, it wouldn't surprise me if they're actually going to transition to Sacramento permanently. It's pretty close to Oakland and it is a good sized area. They would likely keep a large portion of their fan base and I think they could get a stadium built there relatively easily. Fischer is friends with the Kings owner (who helped pull off this latest agreement).
The half resort and half baseball stadium on the strip never made much sense. It's prime land that can bring in much more money to Vegas being a casino resort than a baseball stadium. If they really wanted to blow one up for a stadium it should be the Rio.
(That said, its location still sucks.)
The best stadium site is probably still the originally-proposed spot just west of 15, across from T-Mobile Arena and a short distance north of Allegiant. It would get all three venues close.
I think that the stadium barely seats 25k people (maybe a bit more, but I don't think so) and in order to make the numbers work they need constant sell outs, which is tough even for the best teams to do, let alone a team that's been among the worst in the game for years and is coming from a minor league stadium. They're counting on opposing fans going to the games like they do for NFL games, but baseball isn't the same; unless they can figure out a way to make all of the home games Fri-Sun, that is (and I doubt that's even possible).
Say what you want about the Trop, it wasn't that bad of a place to stay. They just re-did it about 10 years ago, the pool area was pretty nice, and it was easy to get around in. This is a prime location for a casino/resort, and putting a stadium there sounds odd to me.
As an architect I have pretty strong feelings about the firm that was chosen and what the design looks like in the press renderings. Picking Europeans to design a baseball stadium in Las Vegas is just insane to me.
But I agree, unlike hockey and football which are much easier as one-off travel events for fans, trying to fill a mid-week A's-ChiSox series in the middle of August when both squads are well below .500 is a big ask.
To be clear, Oakland was going to lose the team regardless. Their local politicians fucked this up so epically that there was no chance of coming back.
But if you play this out a few years, you give Salt Lake City and Portland a chance to get their ducks lined up for a serious relocation pitch.
As it stands, SLC might just be moving towards getting the second expansion slot when MLB decides to go to the ATM again.
in order to be eligible for this year's round of MLB revenue sharing (also known as "welfare for the billionaire assholes").
And the A's are definitely going ATM, and they'll likely end up in Sacramento IMO.
This whole process has been a massive disaster for everyone involved.
...and that is double what the A's have in payroll.
....then there's fifty feet of crap....and then there's us.
I have no idea if that quote from Moneyball is real, but it's certainly accurate.
Other than when Walter Haas Jr. owned the A’s, they’ve had some of the most tightfisted skinflint owners in sports, and that includes going back to Connie Mack who twice had fire sales of championship teams.
They had 4 recent championships to celebrate by 1990 (relatively speaking), 3 straight rookie of the years, a great stadium (though it was big, it was still a nice place to take in a game and the whole retro stadium stuff hadn't taken off yet), and a great owner (Haas) with a great payroll.
The Giants had been winning recently (good run from 86-89 at that point), had brought up some decent players (but no rookie of the year types, though Will would have been in the running if he hadn't missed so much time--story of his career, I suppose) but they had a shit stadium and a shit owner who couldn't get anything done and who insisted on public money for a stadium and that was always a longshot. To be fair, it probably would have happened in the 1989 election but the earthquake screwed it up and that POS owner of the Kings at the time (Lugenbill?) started a campaign of disinformation claiming that the funds used to build the new stadium would be diverted from quake relief funds (which wasn't true, but that never stops these guys).
Fast forward 2 years and Oakland started losing some of their stars and came back to earth. Lurie tried to sell the Giants to a group headed by Mike Piazza's dad (I think) that was going to move the team to Tampa Bay and MLB pulled out all the stops and forced him to consider local buyers. A group led by Safeway Chairman Peter Magowan stepped in and bought the team, fixed the stadium up as much as one could possibly hope for at that point, signed the best hitter I have ever seen, and worked to get a stadium built with no public money. Now they're swimming in cash with a paid off stadium, real estate projects in the vicinity, and their own TV contract.
No dog in this fight for this Braves fan, but it is sad seeing a team with rich history move to Vegas, especially after the Raiders just did the same. I'd certainly defer to you, my fellow 49ers (Montana!) fan, but man, I'd think there would be some deep pockets in the Bay Area who could keep them local. Like you said, the Giants reboot has worked out very well, and as a neutral, I'd rather see a catalyst for Oakland rather than one for a city that is already red hot.
"In 1992, John purchased a stake in the San Francisco Giants with his father, as part of a locally-formed investment group's effort to prevent the franchise from relocating to the Tampa Bay area.[1] His father's memoir describes John as having been anxious about rumors in the early 1990s that the Giants could move to Florida. He told his father: "I think we ought to try to put a deal together to keep the Giants here"
but as he has said multiple times, "you cannot buy what isn't for sale." Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle) has expressed interest in numerous bay area teams in the past (A's, Warriors, Niners maybe Sharks) would likely be a candidate as well, but he's getting up in years.
Huizenga didn't want another MLB team in FL and O'Malley wanted to maintain the rivalry. O'Malley likely carried more clout, but MLB wanted Huizenga's deep pockets behind an expansion franchise.
Oakland? I think you meant Vegas.
Agreed, it’s truly a ridiculous plan. Even the Dodgers playing in the Coliseum after they moved made more sense. Though it should be noted that the Sacramento stadium capacity is pretty typical for a minor league team. And with the A’s payroll and personnel, they might as well be a minor league team.
I really do. It’s hard to fault someone for not wanting to go and watch a baseball game in a toilet bowl when everyone else (except Tampa) is playing in either gorgeous new parks or historic parks (except for you White Sox).
But I don’t feel a damn thing for the City of Oakland. They gaslit MLB for years with proposals they knew didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing. And while the idea of baseball in Vegas intrigues me, it also pissed me off that another billionaire owner is getting free money instead of having to chip in his fair share.
Whenever anyone says that college sports are getting worse, I only have think of the ownership or professional sports to know it could be worse.