It Doesn't Have To Be This Way For the Oakland Athletics

After 11 games, the Oakland Athletics are 2-9. They have scored only 36 runs and have allowed 89. The team’s -53 run differential is the worst in the majors. The A’s early season futility is reaching historical levels.

It’s not surprising, then, that in six home games, the A’s have reported 68,572 in total paid attendance, which averages to 11,429 per game. But that doesn’t tell the story of what’s really going on. In their most recent three home games—against the Cleveland Guardians on April 3-5—the average paid attendance each game was only 3,790.

The A’s are a mess.

The Oakland Coliseum is a dump

Built in 1966 as a multi-sport stadium, it is the fifth-oldest ballpark in MLB after Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium, and Angel Stadium—all of which have been renovated and upgraded to provide modern amenities. Last season, the Coliseum was overrun by feral cats and possums. There have been plumbing problems for years. The problems are so bad there’s even a Twitter account named after the sewage.

Everyone agrees that A’s would be a more attractive team to play for and to watch on the field in a new, state-of-the art ballpark. But that agreement quickly dissolves on the questions of where the new ballpark should be located and who should pay to build it.

The A’s ballpark saga has been going on for so long that the blog New Ballpark—which covers the A’s quest for a new home—is now old enough to vote. If you want to get into the weeds on every proposal, counter-proposal, and counter-counter-proposal over the last 18 years, spend a few hours on New Ballpark. I also highly recommend the site Field of Schemes by Neil deMause. At Field of Schemes, deMause critically analyzes public funding for professional sports facilities. He has devoted considerable time and effort to writing about the A’s efforts to get a new ballpark.

At the moment, the A’s appear to be pursuing a two-pronged strategy.

• The A’s say they want to build a new privately-financed ballpark at Howard Terminal near Jack London Square in Oakland as part of a larger office, retail, housing and park development. There are pages of detailed information, charts and graphics about the Howard Terminal proposal on the A’s website. But financing is very much still up in the air, as are final approvals from the myriad governmental agencies that need to sign off on such a monumental waterfront development project.

• The A’s are pursuing a plan to move the team to Las Vegas, to a ballpark that has yet to be designed, planned or financed.

The idea of this strategy is to play one city off the other in an effort to sweeten the pot of financial incentives and speed up the approval process. The strategy doesn’t appear to be working.

The A’s could field a competitive team while pursuing a new ballpark

You know who else is desperately trying to get a new ballpark built? The Tampa Bay Rays. That’s right, the team that has started the season 11-0 and is breaking records left and right. That Tampa Bay Rays. The team that has played in two World Series since 2008 and appeared in the postseason 8 times in the last 15 seasons? That Tampa Bay Rays.

The Rays joined MLB as an expansion team in 1998 and have been playing in Tropicana Field ever since. The Trop is generally considered the worst ballpark in the majors—worse than the Coliseum. This video, while amateurish, provides a good overview of what makes the Trop so bad.

Like the A’s, the Rays have been on a long and tortured quest for a new ballpark. The latest plan, backed by St. Petersburg, Florida Mayor Ken Welch, calls for the Rays to work with St. Petersburg and a Houston-based development company to build a new ballpark with retail, office and housing on the existing Tropicana Field site.

Somehow, the Rays have figured out how to walk and chew gum at the same time. Ownership and business folks in the organization work on a new ballpark deal while the baseball operations team drafts and develops young talent, makes trades to improve the team, and signs young stars to favorable medium-term deals.

What is John Fischer’s plan?

From where I sit, it looks like A’s owner John Fischer is sabatoging his team’s baseball operations, pushing away the fan base, and burning up the last vestiges of good will the A’s have left in Oakland to prove that he needs to move the team to Las Vegas.

After making the postseason in 2018, 2019, and 2020, the A’s started selling off their stars for spare parts: Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, Chris Bassitt, Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas all play for other teams now.

The A’s have the lowest Opening Day payroll in MLB this season. Aside from the awful play on the field, the small payroll doesn’t sit well with fans after Forbes reported that the A’s had $29.2 million in operating income in 2022. Fischer disputes those numbers but hasn’t opened the A’s books for public examination of what exactly is going on.

On Monday, CBS Sports Radio host Damon Amendolara ripped into Fischer, calling him the biggest disgrace in professional sports. I don’t agree with everything Amendolara said (and I particularly don’t agree with his sidekick’s comments that the Moneyball era caused the problem). But I do think Amendolara’s overall take is a fair one.

The City of Oakland and A’s fans deserve better.