A's fans deserve better.
But sadly, any fans who have stuck around know the drill by now.
The A's are tearing it all down, again. This weekend, All-Star starting pitcher Chris Bassitt to the Mets. Monday, Matt Olson, a legitimate MVP candidate, to the Braves.
More will come in the days and weeks to come. Matt Chapman, Sean Manaea, Frankie Montas — anyone wearing green and yellow and anywhere near arbitration is on the market.
And while you could make the argument that the A's have done well in the deals they have already made, that misses the point.
This batch of A's was supposed to be the core of a competitive team. It was a competitive team up until last season.
But instead of augmenting around them while they were inexpensive, instead of signing good players to contract extensions before they hit free agency, the A's blew it all up again, well before this core's time was up.
Predictable? Of course.
But sports are an escape from everyday life. They need to sell hope — the idea that things will be great this year, or, at the worst, that they'll be better soon.
How could anyone argue that's the case with these A's?
The way this organization treats fans is repugnant. No, it's even worse: It's shameless.
Who cares if these new prospects are good? By the time they reach the big leagues — if they reach the big leagues — they'll play a few years and then be traded for more kids.
So much work, all to avoid ever actually having to sign a player to a fair-market deal.
This is the A's model — never-ending cycles of long, arduous rebuilds and slow, painful teardown. In the middle, there might be a couple of seasons where the A's will break your heart come October. It's minor league. It's hopeless.
The A's have run this scheme so long that Moneyball has become a pejorative term.
But let's call it what it really is: Cheap.
For fans, this is an abusive relationship, full of contradictory actions and half-truths.
It's beyond annoying that this market only has one Major League Baseball team that's trying, but I'm happy that fans have wised up to the A's ways and are leaving the team. The A's have done everything in their power to scare away customers and one-time fans are wisely taking them up on the offer.
I've had a half a dozen hat-wearing, Coliseum-on-a-Tuesday-night fans say they're done with this team over the last few weeks. And these are not reactionary people. They knew what was coming, but now that a new cycle has started, their new reality is rooting for the Padres, Mariners, White Sox, or Giants.
There will always be folks with Stockholm syndrome, no doubt, but this fanbase has been shaved down to the bone.
After all, you can only treat the folks giving you money like suckers for so long.
And no, a new ballpark won't fix this relationship.
Yes, the ballpark. The A's use the same old excuse for their same old behavior — the Coliseum.
Of course, the A's — led by team president Dave Kaval — bash the park and its "experience" every chance they get.
The irony is that in recent years, the team has been pretty good and the die-hard fans have turned the Coliseum into something definitively Oakland. "Baseball's Last Dive Bar", the T-shirts read.
There could be a cool factor there. That's something a competent organization could sell while they try to build a new park.
Instead, the A's nearly doubled season ticket prices at the dump for 2022. Hey, maybe there are a few more suckers out there.
The A's excuses for treating fans poorly ring empty. As such, the RingCentral Coliseum (is that still the name?) will be empty this season.
Of course, the A's say things will change if they just get a new ballpark. They even used it as an excuse today:
"This is the reality of our situation and why it's imperative we get a new ballpark," A's general manager David Forst — a good general manager who should leave for a better job — said after trading Olson Monday.
But that's nonsense.
Now, I do think that team owner John Fisher will build his waterfront condos — sorry, I mean, ballpark. And here's a bonus for the billionaire real estate mogul and heir to the GAP fortune: Major League Baseball will once again subsidize his team with revenue sharing. At its peak, the A's received more than $30 million a year.
But the A's will play the same game when they move into new digs, just like the Marlins and the Pirates did after they moved to new ballparks.
That's because cheap is a mindset. It's permeated every ounce of the A's organization, and it comes from the top down.
The A's can say that they'll change all they want, but Fisher has shown his true priority is profit. Moving into a bigger, nicer house won't change a thing — it'll only amplify the truth. The mortgage will be much more expensive. There will be more utility bills to pay. The profit margin will have to remain the same — heaven forbid Fisher doesn't take his annual cut — so player salaries will stay compressed.
Of course, this could be some other city's problem. But then again, the A's threat to leave Oakland has been omnipresent for so long it no longer registers to anyone outside of Oakland City Hall.
No one has stopped them for just as long.
Forget this "parallel paths" nonsense. Go. Try it. This organization stopped being a point of civic pride long ago — find another market to embarrass.
And yet the A's still hang around.
I bet it's because Las Vegas doesn't really want them either. Maybe a suburb will give them a bunch of money, but what reputable strip casino would want to be associated with the A's? Vegas is classy now.
A cartel of owners worth their salt would force Fisher to sell. He's not serious about owning a baseball team. Sadly, too many of his cohorts in the club that is Major League Baseball share his priorities. And because a salary floor was not instituted in this new collective bargaining agreement, there's no reason for the A's or the other cheap teams around baseball to start spending on players. They can just take their handouts and their profits and keep chugging along, losing fans the whole way.
And let's be clear: Fisher doesn't deserve handouts from Major League Baseball. The A's play in the sixth-largest media market in the country. Per Nielsen, the San Francisco Bay Area has 2.6 million television homes. That's more than Atlanta, Houston, Boston, and Washington D.C.
But the A's market is, in fact, even larger. The A's include Sacramento as part of their fan base, as their games are broadcast on NBC Sports California in the capital city. For a moment, a station in Sacramento was the team's radio flagship.
Did you know that the Sacramento media market, which includes Stockton and Modesto, is larger than that of Portland, Ore., Charlotte, St. Louis, or Indianapolis? There are nearly 1.5 million television homes in it.
That's more than 4 million television homes available to the A's. Northern California is the third-largest media footprint in the country.
This region can support two teams — there's no doubt in my mind about that.
But the A's want to be small-time. They don't aspire to play with the big boys, despite the fact that they play in a big market.
And there's no reason to believe that's ever going to change.
