💧 The 2025 Placeless A’s

[A minor league stadium for a bush league owner]
Earlier this week, the Red Sox swept the Athletics in a three game set at the unbranded Oakland Coliseum. While I detest the horrible invasiveness of advertising into every facet of our lives, it’s sad and more than a little pathetic that the A’s can’t even find a company to purchase the naming rights for their stadium. Of course, it’s not too surprising, given what’s happening in Oakland. The team stinks. In game one of the series, they committed five errors in the first three innings alone. It was painful to watch.

Then again, not many people did watch. A total of 18,166 fans attended that three game series in person, an average of just over 6,000. That is very, very low for a major league baseball team. In fact, it would be pretty low for a minor league baseball team. In 2023, 19 minor league teams managed to attract more fans per game.

The problem is that the A’s miserable ownership has been neglecting the team for years. They coughed up the lowest payroll in 2023, and then decided to reduce it further in 2024. After failing to get the public to buy them a new stadium in Oakland, they made a push to follow their former stadiummates, the NFL’s Raiders, to Las Vegas. It’s not clear that the Las Vegas Athletics will actually happen1, but it’s certain that the team’s lease at the Coliseum is up after this year.

Discussions for a short-term lease to continue playing at the Coliseum apparently failed recently, and yesterday, the team announced they will be playing in West Sacramento from 2025 through 2027 (or possibly later).

The A’s will play at Triple-A ballpark Sutter Health Park for the 2025-27 MLB seasons and have an option for one more year in 2028, should there be any delays in the Las Vegas ballpark construction process, the A’s announced Thursday. The team will not feature a city designation during the interim years. It will simply go by the Athletics or A’s.

All of this can only be described as sad. The A’s are a storied franchise who brought four World Series championships to Oakland. Now, they’ll be playing 90 miles from their home of over 50 years, in a minor league ballpark that doesn’t even have actual seats in the outfield. If a single big name free agent chooses to sign with the Placeless A’s2 in the next few years, I’ll be shocked.

Major League Baseball never should have let things get to this point. Fans deserve better and they are, rightly, pissed. As friend-of-the-site Oliver Y. noted, however, at least one group is surely thrilled. The marketers at Sutter Health are probably popping champagne in celebration of their past decision to buy the naming rights to a AAA minor league baseball stadium.

Footnotes:

Just two months ago, the mayor of Las Vegas suggested the team should pitch a new plan in the Bay Area, rather than coming to Sin City. ↩︎

I’ve never heard of a team lacking a location designation before. That’s a hell of a thing. ↩︎