Tag: A’s

Oakland isn’t going to just let the A’s extend their lease

Watch as the A’s try to extract something they need from a city they’ve been openly and unfairly criticizing for months and months.

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If you’ve been following along with the Athletics’ search for a stadium to play baseball in during the years where the (supposed, hypothetical) Las Vegas stadium is being built, then you already know that it is not going well. As I wrote for Baseball Prospectus earlier this month, John Fisher’s A’s no longer have a lease with the city of Oakland after the 2024 season, and then, playing outside the Bay Area until 2028, when the (supposed, hypothetical) Vegas stadium is finished and ready for baseball will cost them their regional television contract, which pays them $67 million per year.

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A’s ‘not likely’ to hit public funding cap with Las Vegas ballpark, says people who are new at this

We’re gonna need some better journalism than this.

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Good news, everyone! The CEO and President of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said that the A’s aren’t likely to use all $380 million in public funds that they’ve been allotted for a new ballpark in Vegas. The Las Vegas Review-Journal relayed the news in the way only an outlet that regurgitates authority figures without checking them can: by quoting them extensively and never raising an eyebrow about it.

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Notes: A different MLB salary cap, Barbara Lee’s ‘Moneyball Act’

The A’s might have opened up quite a few cans of antitrust-flavored worms, and MLB has new ideas for curbing spending.

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There won’t be a salary cap instituted for spending on players, no matter how many times someone leaks to the press that the owners want a salary cap. They always want a salary cap. The luxury tax system exists because of that desire for a salary cap, and it already effectively works like one to a degree — that’s as far as the Players Association is willing to go on this particular matter, and it’s not like they actually meant for things to get the way they did, either.

A salary cap on non-player spending, though? Oh you know MLB can get away with that. Or at least, institute it without a fight, since front offices, scouts, and so on aren’t unionized, and therefore can’t actually fight that sort of thing. Which is exactly why this appears to be the next area of spending that MLB is looking to cut. Per Evan Drellich:

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The A’s relocation and MLB’s antitrust exemption don’t fit together

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Remember the summer of 2022, when MLB had to turn its attention away from the lockout and the then-finalized collective bargaining, and toward Congress, which was questioning the league about its antitrust exemption? Remember, too, that one of commissioner Rob Manfred’s defenses of the antitrust exemption — which was under scrutiny in no small part due to the mistreatment and exploitation of minor-league players — was that its central purpose was to keep teams from relocating, taking baseball away from the communities that had it in the process?

The receipts are out there, so let’s start going through them. Here’s Manfred speaking with Bill Shaikin at The Los Angeles Times, from July 15:

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The A’s are horrid (and also bad at baseball)

MLB and the A’s can blame the fans all they want, but neither they nor their actions built this embarrassment.

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The A’s are almost unbelievably bad in 2023. With most of the first month of the season behind them, their record sits at 5-21, and it’s a deserved record, too. Their pythagorean record, which is based on runs scored vs. runs allowed, is also 5-21. They haven’t scored 100 runs yet, but they’ve given up 212 of the things. You’re just not going to win very many games when that’s the case.

Back in February, I wrote that “The A’s have been busy, but only relatively speaking”. Everything in there is still pretty spot-on now that games are being played, with one exception: I did write that they might be better than they were last season given their various moves. In my defense, I said that because of how awful they were in 2022, when they went 60-102 and had a pythagorean record of 59-103. When I said their moves “probably made the A’s better” I meant in the sense that maybe they’d avoid 100 losses this time around. Which is to say, not much better!

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The A’s have been busy, but only relatively speaking

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The A’s keep on making moves this offseason, with the latest of them a trade of reliever-turning-starter A.J. Puk to the Marlins for sophomore outfielder JJ Bleday. It’s something of a challenge trade, since Puk converted to the bullpen in the minors and hasn’t made a start in the bigs, while Bleday’s rookie season didn’t approach his Triple-A production, but the thing I mostly want to note is that the A’s have been busy, but they haven’t exactly been putting in full effort. Again.

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Rob Manfred made an empty threat against Oakland

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Well, I hope you’re sitting down for this. It’s some real heavy stuff. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has threatened the city of Oakland. Saying the team could move to Las Vegas wasn’t enough: now the league is preparing to impose sanctions. In addition to claiming the A’s won’t be forced to pay relocation fees should they need to move, now Manfred has said if Oakland doesn’t give in and hand the A’s the stadium deal they’re looking for, so help them MLB is going to take away the A’s revenue-sharing dollars in 2024. May God have mercy on their souls.

If you can’t tell by all the ham above, this is some real goofy, empty threatening here, even my MLB commissioner standards. Neil deMause already covered quite a bit of the emptiness of it all at Field of Schemes, so you should read that, but I’ll grab a choice quote all the same:

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A’s minor leaguers can’t afford to play home games

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Back in June, I wrote about how Cardinals’ minor leaguers were struggling to pay for their hotels during home games — that they were spending more than they were making on homestands, even while staying at a discounted hotel. It certainly was not a situation unique to those Cardinals’ farmhands, just given the math involved in paying for a hotel for home games while making a salary well below the poverty line, but St. Louis’ minor leaguers were one of the first to speak out anonymously and with a team-level identifier attached.

Now, some Oakland A’s minor leaguers are saying the same thing is happening to them. Alex Schultz at the SFGATE wrote about how A’s minor leaguers playing for Single-A Stockton can’t afford to pay for a hotel during home games, even though the A’s got a bulk discount at one. The situation is the same as it was for the Cardinals’ players highlighted in June: thanks to coronavirus protocols during the pandemic, not being able to stay with host families, or stuff six of themselves into a three-bedroom apartment to rent at a severe discount, is sucking up what little pay the players usually manage to take home.

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