MLB reportedly has ‘gag order’ on interested A’s buyers

It’s not that the Bay Area lacks people who want to buy the A’s, it’s that they’ve been ordered to be quiet about it until MLB says it’s fine to speak up.

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I had missed this originally when it ran in the San Francisco Chronicle back on July 17, but Noah Frank’s recent Baseball Prospectus column linked to and quoted it, bringing it to my attention. Apparently, MLB has a “gag order” out on anyone in the Bay Area interested in purchasing the Athletics from John Fisher.

Scott Ostler of the Chronicle wrote about how John Shea, another Chronicle journalist, had asked commission Rob Manfred if a potential mayoral change in Oakland could bring the city back into contention “if the Las Vegas deal falls apart,” or just as a potential expansion location in the future, and then, well, here you go:

“Look,” Manfred said, “our Oakland decisions have been made. What happens in Oakland is between the citizens of Oakland and their elected officials.”

Oh? Why is it, then, that various Bay Area groups interested in buying the A’s and keeping them in Oakland, or bringing an expansion team to Oakland, have been warned to keep quiet about their interest or risk being crossed off the list of potential buyers?

That warning has come to prospective buyers from Oakland officials, who say they have tried to get MLB to lift that gag order so the world can know that there are folks with money who believe in Oakland as an MLB city.

Fascinating! Ostler wonders if the reason for this is that prospective buyers would make Fisher and MLB’s decisions look bad simply by existing — likely, considering how awful Fisher is — or if the issue is that this entire relocation bid is predicated on the idea that Oakland simply cannot support a big league team, necessitating the switch to a location that’s smaller by media market and population, and oh, is also already Los Angeles Dodgers’ country.

I’ve written before that there was money to be made in Oakland, but Fisher and Co., and their various decisions over the years that self-sabotaged the franchise’s chances and reputation kept that from happening. If the city is to blame in any way, it’s only in that its citizens behaved as anyone would after suffering as many sustained attacks on their interest in the team as they did.

This gag order will surely remain in place until the Vegas deal has or has not happened, officially. (Related: a stadium being built in Las Vegas is now considered “likely” according to the CEO of the company that owns the land it’s supposed to be constructed on. Now there’s a strong show of support.) MLB doesn’t want it to be lifted because John Fisher doesn’t want it to be lifted: this is still his team, and will be until he decides to change that, and since he’s still pushing forward with this whole deal even though I have a hard time believing Las Vegas was ever actually supposed to be where the team was going to go after 2025, well. He’s a stubborn man who, if he was capable of feeling shame and embarrassment, would be feeling those things right about now, and pushing forward to salvage his pride so that in the end it can all look like this was meant to happen the way it was.

So, potential owners won’t break the gag order, because why would you jeopardize your chance of plucking the team from Fisher’s hand when it’s believable that he’ll fail in bringing the team to Vegas? And MLB won’t lift it until after Fisher has actually given up, though, it should be noted, that Sacramento’s media market (on par with Cleveland’s) is still small enough that, should the A’s end up staying there permanently instead of temporarily, they’ll still be eligible for revenue-sharing checks. Which is the most significant driving force for Fisher to relocate in the first place, as he had already had them removed once in his time in Oakland, and this second run of them was just a temporary stopgap until the stadium situation was resolved or he ran out of time on that one, whichever came first.

Which is to say that Fisher might not want to sell even if the Vegas thing blows up in his face, because Sacramento still has things he wants, like “not being Oakland” and “revenue-sharing checks” and “being small enough that he can still cry poor and blame everyone and everything besides himself when the team still isn’t any good”. Maybe one brave potential owner who believes they’re never going to get a shot at the team will break the gag order and speak up to make this a bigger deal than something tucked away inside of an article, though. Then at least we can do what we always seem to have to settle for, which is laughing at Fisher and MLB’s defenses of his behavior.

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