Red Pinstripes: A's owner wants all the public money
Plus the trade market is starting to get going
Good morning,
Welcome to MLB Wednesday here at Red Pinstripes. It seems like most of the league is in a holding pattern as we wait for the trade deadline to shake things up this month. But there was movement on the Oakland stadium situation and it turns out that their owner might not be happy with nearly a half-billion dollars in public money.
The A’s ownership is trash
The Oakland city council approved a nonbinding term sheet for the Oakland Athletics to construct a new stadium at Howard Terminal. Under the terms approved by the council, the Athletics would be eligible to receive up to $495 million from the city and/or county to pay for infrastructure upgrades required at the new stadium site.
There’s just one problem: the Athletics don’t think they’re getting enough public money out of the deal. Technically, public subsidies for stadiums are illegal in California, but teams and cities can get around the law by having the local jurisdictions pay for infrastructure upgrades. The A’s want something approaching $1 billion to stay in Oakland.
Here’s the story in The Athletic:
"I think it is important to remember that the current term sheet, even with these amendments, is not something that the A's have consensus around," (Athletics’ President Dave) Kaval said. "It's not a term sheet that we proposed with edits that we kind of have come together in mutual agreement.
"And I just really want to stress that voting yes on something that we don't agree with or we don't have consensus around is not an effective path forward."
Now the ball is clearly in the Athletics’ court. They have been publicly looking at other cities where the team could move if it doesn’t like what it sees from Oakland. But they’ve already blown a lot of good faith from fans in Oakland and around the country.
Essentially, it comes down to A’s owner John Fisher wanting to play with his Tonka trucks and he wants the city of Oakland to pay for it. If he can find another city that will pay more, he’ll move the team there.
At this point, it’s worth looking at who the A’s owner is, so I recommend this excellent profile from Alex Coffey for SFGate.
Who is John Fisher? Billionaire A's owner won't talk, so we spoke to over 20 people in his orbit.
Fisher is the scion of the family that founded The Gap and has wanted to build something his entire life. Unfortunately for A’s fans, that might mean taking their team to another city.
At the same time, the A’s don’t seem like they want to spend money on their own team. They’ve continually run among the lowest payrolls in baseball and last year were the most prominent team to refuse to pay stipends to minor leaguers, a policy that was eventually reversed.
You might also recall that earlier this year we learned that A’s minor leaguers are being fed the equivalent of the Fyre Fest diet.
Monday, SFGate broke a story that A’s minor leaguers were making less money playing baseball than they had to pay to split hotel rooms for home games.
This is an embarrassing organization that needs new ownership for the sake of its players and for the sake of its fans.
Trade market takes center stage
With the All-Star break and the MLB draft over, teams have finally turned their attention to the trade deadline. And this deadline could be fascinating. For one, just look at the NL East where the Nationals and Braves could be sellers or buyers. Or maybe both. Other swing traders include the Reds, Cleveland, the Yankees(!), and the Angels.
The Twins are also interesting to watch. We knew they would try to sell high-dollar players on expiring deals like Nelson Cruz and Josh Donaldson. What’s interesting is that there’s also noise surrounding Byron Buxton and Jose Berrios. Both would instantly be the top hitter and pitcher on the market.
We’ll also see demands change as players get hurt and return from injury. We saw that with the Phillies Tuesday when Zach Eflin went on the IL with patellar tendinitis and Aaron Nola had another bad start. Suddenly, the Phillies might need a starter better than what they had been shopping for. It was a reminder that teams could have to change plans on the fly over the next ten days.
Here are some other good primers of the trade deadline.
Joey Gallo, José Ramírez, Trevor Story traded at deadline? (The Athletic)