The Oakland A’s are no more, and here’s why

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We’ve known this was coming for some time, of course, but it’s official: the Oakland A’s have played their final games in that city, as they’ll close out the 2024 season on the road. The next time they play a home game, it will be in Sacramento… assuming that park does end up with the necessary renovations to appease the Players Association, anyway.

The shock of this has, unsurprisingly, hit hard, both for people who have known this day was coming and for those who were sort of forced to recognize what’s been going on for the better part of the last two years. I wanted to address something Buster Olney posted on Twitter, though, since it feels like a too-common sentiment both for some media and fans who haven’t been locked in on this whole saga.

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Dick Moss, MLBPA legend, passes away at 93

One of the union pillars that helped banish MLB’s reserve clause passed away over the weekend.

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The names you so often hear associated with the end of Major League Baseball’s reserve clause are players Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, as well as MLB Players Association executive director Marvin Miller, for encouraging this challenge to be made in the first place. Those players didn’t argue their own case in front of an arbitrator, however: that job went to Dick Moss, who had been hired by Miller as the union’s general counsel in 1967, and won his most famous and vital case eight years later, representing Messersmith and McNally, but in reality, far more players than just those two. His is a name worth remembering, too.

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Notes: A’s and Las Vegas timeline, Reinsdorf’s stadium gambit, incompetency

The more things change? No, just the more things stay the same.

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You will be shocked, but the A’s are in the news again for their planned move to Las Vegas. You will be even more surprised by this, but it’s more like “news” where information we’ve already had access to is being presented as if it’s new, in such a way that makes it seem if progress is being made. Ah, well, nevertheless.

Here’s an Oakland Fox affiliate, KTVU, doing that very thing earlier this week:

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White Sox to ‘cut payroll’ in 2025 after ‘substantial losses’

Of course.

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Do you see what I did with the headline there? “Substantial losses”? It could be about the White Sox’ revenue from their horrible 2024 season, or the number of losses they’ve suffered slash inflicted on their fans this summer. Safe to say that I’ve still got it after knee surgery.

The White Sox? Well, they’re winners of two in a row, but that doesn’t mean much in terms of whether they’ve got it. Other than that they could lose 30 in a row to balance things out, if only there were 30 more games in ‘24 for them to drop. As it is, they’re still on pace for 124 losses for the season after picking up consecutive dubs, which is two more than the current modern-day record the expansion Mets set in 1962. Leaving aside their chances of playing better than .500 ball the rest of the way to avoid infamy, let’s focus on the 2025 payroll thing.

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Notes: A’s stadium(s), newsletter housekeeping

Another loss for Schools Over Stadiums, issues in Sacramento, and a note about scheduling.

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The news isn’t great for Schools Over Stadiums, the political action committee formed to attempt to stop the Oakland A’s from becoming the Las Vegas A’s. The Nevada educators who formed the PAC were dealt a blow last week by a state district court judge who rejected their lawsuit over the constitutionality of the public subsidies the team would receive to build a new ballpark.

Judge Kristen Luis did not rule on “the merits of the claims,” per the Los Angeles Times’ Bill Shaikin, but instead, stated that whether or not the money the A’s were receiving from the public coffer was constitutional could not be determined until said money was actually made available to the A’s. And it won’t be unlocked for them until they secure the private financing that they need to pay for the rest of the stadium.

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Notes: MLB’s latest threat to Bally Sports, NCAA unfair labor charge

MLB and Bally continue to go at it, while Dartmouth College’s men’s basketball team ups the ante.

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There’s been some progress in the Bally/Diamond broadcasting rights bankruptcy debacle of late, but only for the National Hockey League and National Basketball Association. MLB is continuing to have issues with the regional broadcasting giant, and the latest stems from the agreement Bally made with the NHL and NBA. Evan Drellich has the full story at The Athletic, but there’s one specific thing I want to focus on here: Continue reading “Notes: MLB’s latest threat to Bally Sports, NCAA unfair labor charge”

Let’s check in on the White So—oh god there’s blood everywhere

The record-tying losing streak is over, and somehow, the White Sox are still just as bad as they were during that.

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Monday is Labor Day, and given that this is a labor-focused newsletter, it feels wrong to sign myself up to cover any stories then. So, instead, let’s do our monthly check-in on the White Sox and their horrific 2024 season now, the final weekday of August.

Last we looked in, the White Sox were in the midst of a franchise-worst losing streak that would soon end, but not until after they had tied the historical AL worst mark of 21 in a row. They were 27-84, “good” for a win percentage of .243, and had been outscored by -229 on the season. Things have somehow gotten worse than they were then, which seems impossible. But that’s our 2024 White Sox, baby.

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Notes: NPB free agency, NWSL’s new CBA, NBA’s second apron issues

Japan’s baseball players are looking to make a major change, the National Women’s Soccer League already has, and concerns about what the NBA’s new salary cap rules are doing to player movement.

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According to Evan Drellich at The Athletic, Nippon Professional Baseball players are preparing to fight for a major overhaul of the system used to keep them in place, and in Japan, for as long as it does. They plan to combat the reserve system “on antitrust grounds,” per Drellich, which would mean significant changes to not just movement within the NPB, but for leaving Japan for a league such as Major League Baseball, as well.

Players in Japan have two forms of free agency: domestic and international. Domestic free agency, the freedom to switch to another NPB team, is achieved after seven or eight years in the league, depending on whether the player was drafted out of college or high school.

But to leave as a free agent for a foreign league like MLB, the wait is nine years. Players can depart sooner, but only if their team posts them for bidding. Instead, NPB players want what’s in place in MLB: free agency after a blanket six years, regardless of entry or destination.

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Notes: Kansas City gives up on Royals stadium(?), A’s ballpark financing, trading picks

The Royals get cut out of the public subsidy game (for now), the best an A’s lobbyist can muster is that things are probably on schedule with financing, and my latest at BP.

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Back in April, a referendum was introduced to the voters of Jackson County, Missouri, letting them decide whether or not the public should fund a $500 million subsidy for new stadiums for both the Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals. The public said no, resoundingly so with 58 percent against.

That story isn’t quite over yet, though, as now a second referendum is being prepared, but this time it will only involve the Chiefs. As Neil deMause put it at Field of Schemes:

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MLB’s rumored innings minimum is the league showing its hand

Whether the idea is a good one or not is beside the point here: just recognize that this is all a warm-up for CBA talks.

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For the last month or so, there have been leaks and instances of Rob Manfred speaking at press conferences that give you an idea of what’s being discussed in MLB’s offices. Which is always notable to some degree, but at this point, this far into the current collective bargaining agreement, it’s worth maybe noting all of it a little bit more than it would have been a year or two back.

The current CBA kicked off in 2022, so it will end after the 2026 season, which means we’re less than two years away from the serious ramp up that leads to the actual end of things. Remember, the 2021 deal expired in the offseason without a new deal in place, and MLB imposed a lockout: that could always occur again, if the league thinks the strategy of purposefully waiting out the players worked for them, or, helped expose rifts within the ranks of the players that the league would like additional chances to exploit.

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