MLB commish confirms Oakland A’s will be moving to Las Vegas (Update: $1.5B park on Vegas strip on the way)
- Thread starter Rev
- Start date
Diamondbacks have that roof open for like a month and then that bytch is closed for the entire season
Ive only seen it open on firework nights after the game is over.They do some non-baseball events at Chase Field during the off-season though so I guess the retractable roof helps with that. Concerts with the roof open.
2,064 fans at a recent game, lowest home attendance since 1979. Looking like the COVID season in there, dead as fukk. $900 in the 50/50 raffle pot Ship these cats to Vegas already 
This video is crazy
Ship these cats to Vegas already This video is crazy
Rosenthal: A’s getting free pass to Vegas for being a train wreck. How does that make sense?
A lot of things about the A’s make me want to scream, and their 131-loss pace actually might be the least of them. But before I get to the franchise’s dubious plan to relocate to Las Vegas, can we talk about how owner John Fisher’s train wreck of a team is threatening to wreak havoc on the integrity of the 2023 season?
Picture this: Five AL East teams, all with winning records, battling not just for the division title, but also the three wild cards. Alas, only one earns a wild-card berth after the Rangers win the AL West and both the Mariners and Astros go 13-0 against the A’s to claim the other two wild-card spots.
Far-fetched? Not really. The Mariners already are 7-0 against the A’s, the Astros 3-0. True, we’ve seen tanking teams such as the 2011 to ‘13 Astros and 2018 to ‘21 Orioles create similar inequities. The introduction this season of a more balanced schedule, in which teams play division opponents 13 times instead of 19, makes things a bit fairer. But the A’s are so horrifyingly bad, the possibility of them having an outsized impact on the postseason should tick off the owners of the AL East clubs, and frankly all of the other owners, too.
For that reason and many others, the owners need not roll over for Fisher and his casino-fueled, Las Vegas fantasies. Commissioner Rob Manfred on Thursday told the San Francisco Chronicle that a vote on the A’s move to Vegas could happen by next month, as long as the Nevada state legislature approves the public contribution to the team’s proposed ballpark. After that, 75 percent of the owners would need to approve the A’s relocation. For an owner who opened the season with a major-league-low $57 million payroll, and cannot be trusted in Las Vegas to spend more meaningfully.
A serious pause is in order.
• Has the league prepared a study on the viability of Las Vegas as a major-league city, one that would address the concerns raised by The Athletic’s Eno Sarris and Steve Berman, and others?
• Are any of the owners asking why Manfred is being so accommodating to Fisher when the A’s still would receive revenue sharing if they moved from the nation’s sixth-largest media market to the 40th?
• Will anyone demand an explanation from Fisher on why he is so hellbent on Las Vegas when numerous larger markets, from Portland to Salt Lake City to San Antonio, Nashville to Charlotte to Raleigh-Durham, are available for relocation, as evidenced by their pursuits of expansion franchises?
Dealing with Oakland was impossible, that’s what the A’s and the league keep insisting. Not a ridiculous point, considering Oakland lost the NFL Raiders and NBA Warriors and had ample time to get a deal done with the A’s. We all can agree a resolution is long overdue. Then again, maybe the A’s most recent talks with Oakland would have gone more smoothly if the team had not asked for public help with a $12 billion development project at Howard Terminal that, as I wrote last month, happened to include a ballpark.
The A’s are getting no such deal in Las Vegas, just up to $380 million in tax support for a $1.5 billion park if Nevada state legislators approve a tentative agreement reached Wednesday by the A’s, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo and other local officials. Those officials evidently consider it a win that public financing might account for less than 25 percent of the 30,000-seat ballpark’s construction cost.
To which I ask: Have they seen the A’s play?
The major-league record for losses in modern AL/NL history, 120, belongs to an expansion team, the 1962 Mets. In the pre-1900 era, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who finished 20-134 in a 154-game schedule, were even worse. The A’s, at least, will surpass the Spiders’ victory total on their current 31-win pace. It’s difficult to imagine them getting to 43, the number necessary for them to avoid the Mets’ record.
The rotation, full of youngsters, might stabilize with the return of veteran right-hander Paul Blackburn, who is expected to make his season debut next week after missing time with a middle fingernail avulsion. In theory, the A’s veteran position players, Jesus Aguilar, Jace Peterson, Aledmys Diaz and Tony Kemp, cannot play much worse. Each is sporting an adjusted OPS below league average.
Which raises another issue. The A’s are not even in position to follow the standard operating procedure of a losing team at the deadline, and exchange veterans for prospects. They have lost eight straight games, 11 of their last 12 and 16 of their last 18. After getting swept four straight by the Mariners, they return home Friday for six against the Astros and Braves. It is entirely possible, perhaps even likely, their losing streak will extend to 14 games.
Again, the A’s are not the first team to create competitive disparities by fielding an awful product. Just last season, under the more unbalanced schedule, the Phillies and Mets secured two of the three NL wild-card spots by going 16-3 and 14-5 against the 107-loss Nationals. The introduction of a third wild-card team, at least, left an opening for the Padres.
Even before the change to a more balanced schedule, the presence of one or more overmatched teams did not always assure additional postseason berths for division opponents. In 2019, the Tigers lost 114 games, the Royals 103. But the wild cards, two of them that year, came from the AL East, where the Orioles lost 108 games, and the AL West, where the A’s, back when they were trying, were in the middle of a run in which they made the postseason six times in nine years.
Without a completely balanced schedule, the competition will never be completely equitable. Teams understand that, and also understand the game is cyclical. The 2023 A’s, though, are so much worse than tanking teams of the past, they represent an even greater distortion, an even bigger threat to the sport’s equilibrium.
Fisher willed their demise. Fisher embarrassed his fellow owners. And now the league is going to give Fisher a free pass to a questionable market?
Someone please explain how this makes sense.
Facts, if it's about the teams overall success into the future, how is Vegas considered over Charlotte, Portland, Salt Lake City, Nashville, and San Antonio? Not as sexy as Vegas of course but those other cities can support a MLB team year in and year out much better than Vegas ever could.
2,064 fans at a recent game, lowest home attendance since 1979. Looking like the COVID season in there, dead as fukk. $900 in the 50/50 raffle pot
This video is crazy
They're doing what the Rams did to get out St Louis and intentionally tanking team performance. And fans in the city you're leaving don't usually buy tickets when they know you're leaving lol
Add that with one of the worst teams in the history of baseball, it's all on purpose
RaspberryFitted
Boyz In Motion Member
I was wondering where the fukk were they putting that stadium… But yea. I see“there goes a moonshot all the way to the MGM”
man, if they put this fukkin thing right on the strip 
its gonna be a disaster. traffic would be fukking insane
we need an NBA team, not a baseball team. las vegas doesnt need another draw in the summer
its gonna be a disaster. traffic would be fukking insanewe need an NBA team, not a baseball team. las vegas doesnt need another draw in the summer
It’ll be the Las Vegas Kings by 2030man, if they put this fukkin thing right on the strip
we need an NBA team, not a baseball team. las vegas doesnt need another draw in the summer
