One of Major League Baseball’s most prominent agents has stirred the pot about the possibility of the A’s staying in Oakland for another year or longer, and it may be significant that the players’ union has still not signed off on the deal for the A’s to play in Sacramento.
The Oakland A’s as we know them will only exist for 15 more games, and only six more home games at the Oakland Coliseum. Once their season ends on September 29, next season they’ll begin their three-year stint playing in Sacramento, before their anticipated move to Las Vegas in 2028.
Or will they be moving to Sacramento next season? KPIX reports on fresh new rumors that A’s might stay in Oakland next season, or even longer.
The issue that could hold things up for the A’s here is the conditions at Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park, which would house both the A’s and the Giants’ minor-league Triple-A affiliate, the Sacramento River Cats. The two teams would theoretically synch their schedules so their home games never overlap. That ballpark plans to replace its natural grass with astroturf so they wouldn't need to change the grass all the time, but astroturf would create hellishly hot temperatures on the field. So that’s one problem, and another problem is that Sutter Health Park is a minor-league park, so it would need to have some serious upgrades to become Major League Baseball-worthy.
And Sacramento’s KFBK News Radio broke a bombshell story Thursday that the “Major League Baseball's Players Association [MLBPA] has yet to agree to the upgrades.” They also got a statement from the Oakland A’s saying, “MLB and the MLBPA have been engaged in ongoing conversations on plans for our move to Sacramento.”
People, “ongoing conversations” means there is no deal in place, and the players’ union has not signed off on the A’s playing in Sacramento.
KFBK also spoke to MLB player mega-agent Scott Boras, who’s known as one of “the world's most powerful sports agents.” Boras not only represents many of the biggest players in baseball, he’s a former minor league player himself, and a native of the (very hot) city of Elk Grove in Sacramento County.
“The issue is it’s outdoors, you have turf that’s outdoors for Major League players,” Boras told KFBK. “I played on astroturf in the minor leagues, and that hot sun when it's not a domed stadium, my god, it gets hotter than 120, 130 degrees. We have no Major League fields that are astroturf that are outdoors.”
“The other thing is the facilities have to have massive indoor rooms so that players can work out, players can do their pre-game in proper environments, all those things,” he added. “When you’re having a shared facility, when you have multiple teams playing in one space, all those things are unknown."
“I don’t want anything coming to Sacramento that’s not Major League standard,” Boras continued. “Because then what do we put on Sacramento? ‘Oh, they’re the team with the Triple-A ballpark that no players want to play at.’ I don’t think Sacramento deserves that.”
“In the NBA, we have an NBA arena. That’s the Sacramento Kings, they’re a respected franchise in the NBA, because it has the facilities that every other city has. So why would you want to put a pox on the city of Sacramento by carrying out a substandard facility and putting a cloud over Sacramento?”
And then Boras dropped the bomb: that since the African American Sports & Entertainment Group (AASEG) just bought the Oakland Coliseum outright, the A’s would be far better off financially playing there the next few years.
"There's a new party that owns the Coliseum that is now ready and willing to negotiate with the A's, that wasn't before,” Boras explained. The KFBK host asked if the A’s would actually negotiate with AASEG in Oakland, and Boras said, “They have to. Because they get their full TV rights, and maybe a better deal with this thing.”
It is absolutely true that the A’s would get a far more lucrative TV deal from NBC Sports Bay Area playing in Oakland than they will playing in Sacramento. We don’t know how much more, but KFBK describes it as “significantly more.”
Major League Baseball said in a Thursday statement to numerous publications that “It is a certainty that the A’s will play their 2025 season in Sacramento as planned. MLB is continuing to work productively with the MLBPA on the details of the transition."
And honestly, the rumor that the A’s would pull a complete about-face and stay in Oakland another year or longer seems far-fetched at first. But a players’ union revolt against the move, and that a giant pot of money would be there for A’s owner John Fisher if he stays in Oakland a bit longer, means we cannot dismiss this rumor.
Image: HOUSTON, TEXAS - SEPTEMBER 11: Kyle McCann #52 of the Oakland Athletics celebrates after hitting a two run home run against the Houston Astros during the sixth inning at Minute Maid Park on September 11, 2024 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Jack Gorman/Getty Images)
