When Oakland A’s owner John Fisher announced in April that his team would be playing in Sacramento for the next three years while awaiting the construction of a Las Vegas stadium, including how exactly the time-sharing arrangement would work between the A’s and the minor-league Sacramento River Cats. As I noted here at the time:
It just occurred to me that the Pacific Coast League plays week-long series against one team at a time, to cut down on travel. This is going to make drawing up an A’s schedule really interesting, to say the least.
Three months later, and yup, “really interesting” turns out to be not the half of it:
Because the A’s will be co-tenants at Sutter Health Park, they not only will use the same field as the River Cats — the top farm team of the San Francisco Giants — but will need to adhere to Pacific Coast League scheduling to fit in their 81 home games.
It’s an extremely challenging logistical ordeal because MLB and PCL schedules aren’t molded in the same format…
Generally, the River Cats play one team per week in a six-game series with Monday set aside as a travel day. One week at home, the next on the road. The A’s need to mirror that and play in Sacramento when the River Cats are on the road and vice versa…
In other words, the 29 other teams are catering to the A’s because of owner John Fisher’s preference to leave the Coliseum, where scheduling would have been routine, for a temporary home in Sacramento, where the scheduling is complex, the heat is overwhelming and the facilities in need of major upgrades.
Oh yes, the heat, did we forget to mention the heat? Sacramento may actually be to the north of Oakland, but it’s also inland in the Central Valley, which has always been hot and is only getting hotter. The league is trying to schedule as many night games as possible, but the MLB national TV schedule means all A’s Sunday home games will have to start at 1 pm local time, plus the limitations set by the PCL schedule means it’ll be harder than usual to avoid weekday games on “getaway days” when the opposing team needs to catch a flight out of town.
Add in that the River Cats’ home stadium is set to get artificial turf installed, the better to put up with the pounding of two teams using it for home games, and game conditions on the field could be toasty indeed. “Complaints aplenty are expected, including from players, because of the brutal heat” is how the San Francisco Chronicle put it; the players union says it’s currently in talks with the league to try to address this as best as possible.
The Sacramento stadium will hold only 14,000 fans, so at least not too many people will have to subject themselves to the summer heat in order to watch the A’s finish last again. All of this is feeling very much like the Arizona Coyotes‘ attempt to play in a college hockey arena, only with the additional fun of heatstroke; it’s probably too soon to predict that the A’s Sacramento stay will be cut short like the Coyotes’ was at Mullett Arena, but that isn’t stopping people from doing so to beat the rush later.
Could any of this be the River Cats’s owners using this as leverage to get a payout from MLB?
I don’t think Vivek Ranadive, who owns the River Cats as well as the Kings, has any control over any of this: The PCL schedule is set like that because MLB (which now runs all of the minors) has decided that’s optimal for travel, and you can’t make an exception for one team without unraveling the schedule for everyone. And if Ranadive has a weather-control device, I think we would definitely have heard about that.
Someone brilyunt/wealthy/powerful enough to create device that controls weather may well have darn good reasons that would behoove them to remain surreptitious. It could well be used as a boon for friends and bane for enemies, which could easily lead to state intervention.
Francisco Scaramanga was unavailable for comment
I’m just here rec this comment.
Vince Cotroneo apparently isn’t a fan of broadcasting from a AAA sauna.
https://awfulannouncing.com/mlb/vince-cotroneo-final-season-oakland-as-radio-announcer.html
The River Cats’ existence will also interfere with the Athletics’ ability to make up games. Where other teams can sometimes leverage open dates to make up games, the Athletics won’t necessarily have that option.
So they may not have a chance to get in 81 home dates – which will hurt ticket revenue.
I’m still waiting for this to resolve itself with the Cats booting the Cal League from Fresno.
Shouldn’t be as much of an issue since rainouts in CA pretty much only happen in March and April, rarely early May.
It’s a terrible thing to play outdoors in artifical turf in the summer. Esp sad since Sacramento had a really nice grass field.
There will be rainouts on the road, though, and this reduces the flexibility for rescheduling those games.
The turf field decision seems insane. Plenty of teams in the past (1974-75 Mets and Yanks, for starters) have shared grass fields and managed. Unless this is really just Ranadive not wanting any inconveniences for himself in the slightest.
I think he’s enjoying the free upgrades paid for by Fisher…..
I would not be surprised if the Sacramento River Cats end up playing some of their “home” games at the single-A ballpark in Stockton (less than an hour from Sacramento) or in Fresno.
The correct solution is to re-locate the Las Vegas AAA team to another town and have the A’s play in that ballpark until the MLB ballpark on the Strip is ready. Or rather, that would be the correct solution if the A’s were actually going to build a MLB ballpark in Vegas and move there.
I will be stunned if Ranadive agrees to play a single River Cats game outside of Sacramento unless he’s paid to do so. And I don’t see either Fisher or MLB offering to do so.
Absolutely. Totally separate ownerships, I’m sure the Stockton Ports ownership would expect some sort of compensation for such a situation as well. MLB doesn’t have that level of control over the minor leagues.
It’s clear the Vegas deal is collapsing- when it goes does Manfred force the sale? Or buy it from Fisher like we just saw the NHL do with the coyotes? Then offer it parties interested in East bay/sac/vegas. That could theoretically drive the price up.
Once the Vegas move collapses, I could see MLB doing something like what the NHL just did, i.e., MLB lines up an owner with the $ to buy the franchise and relocate it, then forces Fisher to sell to that owner or to sell to MLB who then sells to the new owner.
I don’t think MLB would have a public bidding process, I think they would do it quietly like the NHL did. But who knows.
It could be either/or, but I think the desire to avoid setting a lower floor for franchise value at this juncture in history might push things towards a quietly league-brokered sale. Generally speaking, someone investing in the league now is taking a risk because the regional sports network situation hasn’t fully shaken out, so where is your backbone revenue going to come from? And anyone interested in this specific franchise is taking a risk because they’ve thoroughly burned their existing, highest-revenue potential market, and the relocation targets on offer won’t be nearly as lucrative.
That’s a good point. There was speculation that the reason the Angels and Nationals took their teams off the market after putting them up for sale is that MLB thought the offers were too low and didn’t want a franchise selling for a “low” price.
So, yeah, it might be problematic to have publicly revealed bids for the A’s that might even be less than $1 billion. For sure, the bids for the A’s would be really low given that a new owner would have to pay a big chunk of $ toward a new ballpark in addition to paying to buy the franchise.
Salt Lake City is open, oops, they just blew a billion on hockey and a quarter baked Delta Center renovation. C’est dommage. And Smith Field will be empty next year. C’est dommage.
SLC set aside $900M separately from the billion they spend on the Delta Center. Utah A’s, anyone?
They haven’t set it aside yet — it’s waiting on state funding.
Don’t be entirely surprised if Salt Lake becomes an escape hatch for the A’s and MLB (similar to the Coyotes/NHL) if things fail to materialize in Las Vegas, even considering that tge finances aren’t official.
As a Utahn, I don’t know if it’ll be that easy. There are local political dynamics at play that make funding a ballpark on top of monies already earmarked for the arena and Olympics a lot more difficult. I won’t write it off entirely, but Big League Utah was handed a major setback when the sales tax revenue went to the arena deal.
I have to think the River Cats will temporarily move. Minor league teams move everyday. With 18 months before their new roommates arrive, you’d think they would be looking for an alternate city. Maybe even shack up with their parent team in SF. Would provide convenience for calling players up and sending them down. Two teams sharing an MLB stadium in an MLB city is better than sharing a minor stadium in a minors city.
Ranadive has zero incentive to do that, though.
18 months? Next season is not 18 months away.
Did I miss something?
No, I missed something: Math class.
Thanks!
The field at Oracle Park wouldn’t hold up to 75 AAA games being played there in addition to 81 MLB games. And don’t even suggest tearing out the Oracle Park grass and replacing it with carpet.
I cannot wait for those player complaints! Batting cage beyond center field? Whaaat!!??
This is going to be fun…..
In Sacramento, the temperature reaches over 100° for a handful of days of the summer. In Las Vegas, 100° temperatures endure for nearly everyday throughout the summer months.
I worked outside in Sac (well, Davis/Woodland/Dixon, same same) for literal decades. Odds are decent a few of those starts will suck, but they will hardly be dangerous.
The Las Vegas stadium, if it actually gets built, will be a roofed stadium. Nobody would ever consider building an outdoor summer baseball stadium in Vegas.
Las Vegas (Sunmerlin, properly) literally built an outdoor summer baseball stadium just a few years ago. To supplant the previous outdoor summer baseball stadium in Las Vegas that is now a soccer/occasional football stadium.
I tried to note this last night but it ended up in a comment below — the mobile commenting system could use some improvements, I’ll admit.
They have a roof
They literally just did so in Summerlin for the Aviators.
So look at this!!! no stadium, terrible weather in two different cities? Is this better than Oakland? Why is it o.k. to attack and criticize Oakland but its’ not supposed to be good to criticize the silly and greedy ideas of pro leagues and owners?
Its’ more so the silliness of the fan bases to let the media con them into listening to these pro leagues who don’t see anything but money! The Raiders’ situation was bad enough moving them to L.V. and claiming Mark Davis was involved in the scam. The Raiders don’t own the stadium, are as bad as ever, have to deal with the heat and compete with a lot of top entertainment!
The A’s are greedy and maybe they(somebody) don’t want pro sports in Oakland anymore. The A’s could have a whole complex to themselves. The MLB should say you go find a new home but stop making us look silly.
MLB will allow owners to do whatever they want to secure a public hand out.
It’s actually cooler at 1 pm than it is at 7pm for these games only difference will be you won’t have the blazing hot sun directly overhead at 7. I think these 3 years are gonna be interesting
It might be cooler in the shade (official temps are typically taken in the shade) but the midday game won’t have any/much shade.
Btw does anyone know if the summerlin ballpark has a mister setup? I know the phoenix firebird ballpark had mister setup over some of the seats.
As to scheduling the triple A games don’t start until middle of April and end by Labor Day. Not sure what would happen if the rivercats made the playoffs though. Do the A’s give up their game spots?
The Triple-A season now starts the day after the major leagues and ends in mid-September. Week-long series for the most part, in the International League as well as the Pacific Coast League. And there is an All-Star break this week in Triple-A.