So, Dave Kaval resigned on Friday. The team president of the then-Oakland A’s was most notable for being owner John Fisher’s move threat czar, first spending months tweeting excitedly from events in Las Vegas and then declaring that the team was “focusing our efforts” there in a statement that, intentionally or not, stuck a fork in talks between team execs and the city of Oakland about a new stadium there.
Now, Kaval is gone, to spend more time with his family. No, wait, the other one:
The Athletics announced Friday that team president Dave Kaval, a major architect behind the team’s departure from Oakland, is resigning so that he can “pursue new business opportunities in California,” according to a news release.
And:
“I will be staying in California to explore new opportunities at the crossroads of business and government. I am grateful to A’s ownership for the opportunities they have given me,” Kaval said in the statement.
This isn’t entirely unexpected: Kaval has been pretty much invisible since early summer, with the new public face of the team being board member Sandy Dean, who will now take over Kaval’s job as president on an interim basis. There’s bound to be tons of speculation on whether Kaval jumped or was pushed — he was certainly a liability for Fisher given that he was universally reviled as the guy who took the A’s out of Oakland, but also he may not have wanted to continue on at the wheel of the A’s Oakland-to-Sacramento-to-maybe-Las-Vegas-maybe-not road trip that he helped set in motion. Either scenario makes sense, really — hopefully we’ll eventually get a giant ESPN article breaking down Kaval’s departure.
As for what it means for the [no-city-name-here] Athletics, it’s certainly not a great look for Fisher as he tried to sell a slice of his team for an inflated price on the basis of “Look, we signed a pitcher somebody has actually heard of!” The real test will be to see if Fisher really stages a Vegas groundbreaking in the spring — though I suppose it’s possible he could still put down his required initial $100 million, collect $390 million from the state of Nevada to start construction, and then later back out or threaten to in order to get the state to sweeten the pot. That’s just how sports team owners do, after all.
He was the snake behind the snake (Fisher). Thanks for helping to destroy the team.
That’s one of my big questions: How much of this mess was Kaval’s initiative, and how much was he just the loyal henchman? I kind of hope he pulls a David Samson and starts telling tales out of school, because it would be fascinating, even with the unreliable narrator factor.
I wonder what group will pick him up as some sort of “connected” lobbyist-type? His track record in California doesn’t really shout “I get things done here”.
No surprise though that he doesn’t want to leave the Bay Area for a temporary post in Sacramento, followed by a move to Vegas. He’s a little too young to fully retire, so staying in a larger market makes sense. I too hope he leaves professional sports behind by very publicly airing his experience. The Samson Experience is sometimes illuminating and often entertaining.
It will be interesting to see what sort of organization he turns up with, if only as a warning not to go there. Like Tim K said, his highly publicly visible tenure with the A’s kinda shouts, “does not play well with others.” He stumbled from ambushing Laney College with the idea of taking over their campus, to the magic gondola to nowhere, to unresolved land-use questions surrounding Howard Terminal that would still make it a poor idea under new ownership. And then finally was the face for destroying the whole thing. At some point, somebody who wants their organization to succeed would push back and say, “hey, boss, we oughta slow our roll here.” I guess they don’t teach spine to the Stanford middle management types, though.
Whether the Vegas move threat was his idea or not, and whether the negotiating hardball (in typical incompetent fashion) was his idea or not, Kaval HAD TO know that by accepting the role Fisher offered he was going to be the bad guy. That is literally the job description he accepted (and, from what I understand, actively sought from the organization).
It would be a fine case of natural justice if Fisher and his pathetic franchise end up stuck in Sacramento permanently (how long before he “offers” that city a chance to hang on to the A’s permanently in exchange for a few hundred million in stadium dollars?) or, perhaps more fitting, stuck losing so much money year over year in a 1/3rd full 30k covered stadium in Vegas that the MLB welfare checks just can’t fill the hole.
I feel bad for the fans in Oakland and the players (though they will be paid no matter what…), but the organization itself needs the reality check they are in the process of falling into.
Good riddance to bad rubbish (in both cases).
I believe Kaval was the architect of the “parallel paths” approach, which promised Fisher either something at Howard Terminal or a sweetheart Vegas deal.
He didn’t anticipate Oakland telling them to pound sand when the first “binding agreement” in Vegas was made. Now the sweetheart deal in Vegas is a significantly less subsidy then what other teams in other cities are getting and the casino company they are partnered with are in dire straits.
If this was Kaval’s strategy it couldn’t have failed much more badly than it did.
HT was never happening unless Fisher put a ton of money in.
The coliseum was the logical choice but the team wouldn’t consider it.
Vegas is not proceeding smoothly (just waiting for the inevitable ‘top up’ ask of $500m or so from the city/county to ‘get this done’) and, imo, is unlikely to reach the finish line (they are already late for a 2028 open and don’t look close to finalizing anything).
So, Fisher appears effectively stuck in Sacramento and he hasn’t even played a game there yet.
Neil often makes the suggestion that cities should tell owners to “just go play in the street” then. In this case, the owner has strategically backed himself into just that corner – with Kaval’s considerable tactical assistance.
Total genius.
As I’ve written here before, while I don’t have any inside information, I strongly suspect that Kaval was trying to pump up the Vegas option as leverage, then got stuck with it once Oakland’s response was “fine, don’t let the door hit you.” Especially once Fisher got all starry-eyed about moving to a place that showed him the respect he was due as a failson and would allow him to keep cashing revenue-sharing checks, no matter if it required spending a billion dollars of his own money to build a tiny dome in a tiny media market.
This is basically what happened. Although I don’t think the “binding agreement” failure with Stations Casino should be overlooked. Stations is a legit operator backed with a lot of cash. The Wild West site west of the strip makes sense for a stadium plus some kind of casino/ballpark village. But Kaval/Fisher didn’t do their homework, they had no idea that Stations anti-union stances would doom a funding bill in Carson City. They panicked, partnered with an operator that has no ability to build a Vegas Strip mega resort. Kaval was the face of the Station’s “binding agreement”, after this was announced Oakland stopped the HT negotiations.
Stations’ anti-union stance was part of it. The real problem was the Ferittas have very little interest in baseball and Fisher wanted them to invest in the team. The Ferittas want in on basketball. Sure, they would allow Fisher to lease the land (they would have never sold it), but they are not investing in his baseball team without a say in the operations.
The current site is horrific. It’s way too small, the land is own by a gambling REIT, and parking is non-existent; which means agreements would have to be struck with MGM and Caesars in utilizing their parking garages. Fisher’s attempt to sell equity into his stadium company is falling flat. Investors are way too smart to invest in a company that doesn’t have a tangible asset (stadium would be owned by the govt in avoiding property taxes). Until he somehow comes up with the initial deposit good luck.
Oh and this so-called spending spree the A’s are currently doing: They have no choice. They are mandated to spend 1.5 times of what they collect in revenue-sharing (i.e. handouts) or risk a union grievance AND possibly getting cut out of revenue share altogether. The tax-paying teams are already furious at Fisher and Nutting for collecting checks and sitting on them.
I predict the team will remain in Sacramento and try and leverage a stadium out there.