MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside

[The_Admiral]

11 hours ago, OnWis97 said:

That Orlando Dreamers identity would be perfect for an Iowa-based minor league team.

[Walk-Off]

https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/athletics/as-new-las-vegas-ballpark-plan-comes-with-a-strip-view-2775451

 

I thought that the A's organization's proposal for a ballpark with a major-league-level seating capacity (even if it is 35,000 at the most) and a retractable roof on only nine acres of land was already foolish.  Now comes word that those in charge of the A's want the field at their apparently current dream home at the Tropicana resort site, on the east side of the Las Vegas Strip, to face northwest so that, at least when any retractable roof is open, the Strip could be seen behind the outfield stands.  Unfortunately, another thing that could be seen beyond the outfield stands of a westward-facing baseball field during afternoon games and even the early innings of many night games -- again, at least when a retractable roof would be open -- is the sun ... an often 100-plus-degree-Fahrenheit sun in Southern Nevada ... thus putting way too many batters, catchers, home plate umpires, fans in what would be choice seats at most ballparks, and media personnel in the press box at way too much risk of eye damage.

 

Is creating the potential for a glitzy backdrop during the seventh-inning stretches of possibly just a handful of night games really worth giving a big-league ballpark such a discomfort-inducing layout?  If John Fisher and his minions have been yearning so much for a ballpark that would allow at least those behind home plate to see the skyline of the Strip, then they should have stuck with (and should have kept enduring the presumably higher costs of) the Wild Wild West site, from which a view of buildings along the Strip would be to the east ... and, therefore, would face away from the sun during afternoons and evenings.

[FiddySicks]

Yeah the more I hear about this A’s Vegas move, the more outlandish it sounds, and the more I think it’s just never going to happen. Which is par for the course for the A’s because they’ve had about a million ideas on where to move and none of them ended up being real. 

[The_Admiral]

4 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Yeah the more I hear about this A’s Vegas move, the more outlandish it sounds, and the more I think it’s just never going to happen. Which is par for the course for the A’s because they’ve had about a million ideas on where to move and none of them ended up being real. 

I remember when Cisco Field was going to be the new home of "the Bay Area Athletics at Fremont." Gave us this:

 

 

[Walk-Off]

I agree that the Athletics' owners and executives have made some outlandish decisions in at least some of their attempts to get a new ballpark (regardless of location) since the start of this millennium.  However, between the aggressive actions being taken lately by the A's to try to get something done in the Las Vegas market and MLB's January 15, 2024 deadline for the A's to have a firm deal on a new ballpark in order to keep receiving shared revenues, I think that, whether or not any of us likes it, (a) John Fisher and his partners are currently well on their way to having the A's leave the Bay Area and (b) a sale of the A's, let alone to anyone who would keep the team in the Bay Area, seems to be both highly unlikely in general and something that Fisher and his consortium would conduct only as a financially motivated last resort in particular.

 

If the owners of the A's cannot get what they want in the Las Vegas area, then they might look toward Salt Lake City and possibly work with Gail Miller and her Big League Utah group.  If SLC ends up disappointing Fisher and his clique, then they might aim for Portland, Oregon and maybe join forces with the Portland Diamond Project.  Should Fisher and his lieutenants determine that Portland is not a viable option, but they still want to keep the A's west of the Central Time Zone, then Sacramento and/or Vancouver might come into play.

 

If none of those ideas pan out ... then what?  The Nashville Athletics (my admittedly biased preference should the A's be once again east of the Mountain Time Zone)?  Les Athlétiques de Montréal?  Los Atléticos de la Ciudad de México?  If this quest goes on for much longer, then it could get even wilder and weirder than it is already.

[The_Admiral]

I think the days of searching high and low for a place to move your team are over. The stakes are too high now. Again, I think Sacramento and the Maloofs are a good blueprint for the way things are: when you burn your home market and a market you're trying to move to, the league is going to step in and start guiding things back to the status quo before anyone can do any further damage to prospective markets. The Maloofs actually had three whacks at it -- Anaheim, Virginia Beach, and Seattle -- before the NBA intervened and just made sure the team stayed in place. 

 

I think Warriors ownership's table will be ready before Fisher can start sniffing around Portland or Salt Lake City.

[Sykotyk]

3 hours ago, the admiral said:

I think the days of searching high and low for a place to move your team are over. The stakes are too high now. Again, I think Sacramento and the Maloofs are a good blueprint for the way things are: when you burn your home market and a market you're trying to move to, the league is going to step in and start guiding things back to the status quo before anyone can do any further damage to prospective markets. The Maloofs actually had three whacks at it -- Anaheim, Virginia Beach, and Seattle -- before the NBA intervened and just made sure the team stayed in place. 

 

I think Warriors ownership's table will be ready before Fisher can start sniffing around Portland or Salt Lake City.

Especially baseball. It's no longer the 'low cost' sporting option. You need people with money to attend 81 games a year. You need to cultivate a fanbase that will make local television and merchandising to be profitable.

 

MLB doesn't have a lot of markets. if they want more teams they're going to have to cannibalize LA and NYC area. A team in NJ maybe? A team in Ontario/Riverside/San Bernardino? Where else can currently support an MLB team that isn't currently being crowded out by the other four leagues (yes, including MLS).

 

I just don't see it. Plus, MLB is not aimed at young people. It's not the young person's cheap game.

[Walk-Off]

I can think of many reasons why what John Fisher and his circle are trying to do with the A's might be different -- and might lead to a different aftermath -- from what the Maloof family attempted to do with the Sacramento Kings.  Here are a few of them:

• The late David Stern's criteria for markets worthy of keeping or gaining NBA franchises might have had some key differences from Rob Manfred's priorities regarding which areas are most deserving of retaining or earning MLB teams.
• By all appearances, MLB intends to add at least two teams if and when -- and only if and when -- both the A's and the Rays resolve their respective ballpark conundrums.  On the other hand, the NBA was in no hurry and in no mood to expand at all when the Maloofs were looking either to relocate the Kings themselves or to sell the Kings to someone who would then try to move the team.
• MLB has been subjecting the A's to a January 15, 2024 deadline for a concrete plan for a new ballpark in order for the team to keep receiving revenue sharing payments.  I do not recall the NBA requiring the Kings to meet any deadline for a plan for a new arena so as to maintain or gain any special financial privilege.
• I definitely do not recall the NBA offering a relocation fee waiver to the Kings, let alone for a move to any specific market.  By contrast, MLB is willing to forgo any relocation fee -- a payment of $500,000,000 under normal circumstances -- should the A's relocate to the Las Vegas area.  As far as I can tell, MLB is not offering this waiver for either a move by the A's to anyplace else or any relocation of the Rays.  If that is true, then I wonder if Rob Manfred and/or most of the current owners of MLB franchises (a) want an MLB club in the Las Vegas market as soon as possible, (b) want the A's to leave Oakland and the overall San Francisco Bay Area as soon as possible, and (c) want the Rays to stay in the Tampa-St. Petersburg market more -- maybe even much more -- than they wish for the A's to keep themselves ... ahem ... rooted in Oakland.
• As to why MLB would tolerate, let alone desire, a long-distance relocation of the A's more than it would accept such a move by the Rays and more than the NBA was willing to let the Kings depart from the Sacramento market, it may well be because certain people in high places within MLB believe that the presence of the A's in Oakland -- even during its fifty-sixth season -- is unusually expendable.  Oakland and the A's share a media market with San Francisco and its Giants, that market is currently the smallest one with two MLB clubs, and the A's are at least widely assumed to be (a) a poorer team than the Giants and (b) playing in a poorer-per-capita part of the region than the Giants' immediate backyard.  On the other hand, a move of the Rays to anywhere outside the Tampa-St. Petersburg market (even to Orlando, which shares a media market with some communities along Florida's Atlantic coast but not with any locale on or near the Gulf of Mexico) would leave that team's present home region without any MLB franchise, just as an exit of the Kings from Sacramento would have turned the NBA's presence in that market into an absence from said area.

[BBTV]

9 hours ago, Walk-Off said:

relocation fee -- a payment of $500,000,000 under normal circumstances

 

There is no circumstance in which either team would be asked to pay half a billion dollars as a relocation payment.  I've not found any source that any relocation fee (whether waived or not) has even been decided on.

 

 

[monkeypower]

18 hours ago, the admiral said:

I think Warriors ownership's table will be ready before Fisher can start sniffing around Portland or Salt Lake City.

 

Joe Lacob was pretty in on the Angels this offseason before Arte got cold feet. Sigh

 

Lacob did grow up in Anaheim and worked for the Angels and/or Angel Stadium in his youth, so we'll have to see if he wants a baseball team or just wanted the Angels.

[Ridleylash]

2 hours ago, monkeypower said:

 

Joe Lacob was pretty in on the Angels this offseason before Arte got cold feet. Sigh

 

Lacob did grow up in Anaheim and worked for the Angels and/or Angel Stadium in his youth, so we'll have to see if he wants a baseball team or just wanted the Angels.

Lacob's already expressed interest in the A's as far back as 2005, so I think he's perfectly happy with getting the A's.

[The_Admiral]

17 hours ago, Walk-Off said:

On the other hand, a move of the Rays to anywhere outside the Tampa-St. Petersburg market (even to Orlando, which shares a media market with some communities along Florida's Atlantic coast but not with any locale on or near the Gulf of Mexico) would leave that team's present home region without any MLB franchise, just as an exit of the Kings from Sacramento would have turned the NBA's presence in that market into an absence from said area.

 

In terms of television territories, the Kings more or less act as a second Northern California team. They share a channel with the A's and Sharks, they have mutual blackouts with San Francisco, but share the rest. They were as expendable to the NBA as the A's would be, but you can't have idiots running a taxpayer-handout traveling roadshow across the country or else lots of cities start getting mad at you.

[Walk-Off]

10 hours ago, BBTV said:

There is no circumstance in which either team would be asked to pay half a billion dollars as a relocation payment.  I've not found any source that any relocation fee (whether waived or not) has even been decided on.

 

https://apnews.com/article/mlb-sports-baseball-las-vegas-business-dcd9f06b76427130d3aebff610b0325c

 

https://sports.yahoo.com/oakland-won-t-face-relocation-234958778.html

 

The above two articles, both from last December, state that Rob Manfred told the media that the A's would not pay a relocation fee should they move to the Las Vegas area.  The latter article, which Yahoo Sports repurposed from the paywalled Sportico website, goes so far as to include a direct quote from Manfred that admits to the A's being allowed to dodge a relocation fee if they choose to make the Las Vegas market their new home.

 

As for what an MLB team would be normally expected to pay for the right to relocate somewhere, I think that I have heard $500,000,000 tossed around as the figure in at least one Casey Pratt video and/or at least one Brodie Brazil video.  If my memory is faulty on this matter, then I stand corrected.

 

On 5/13/2023 at 6:31 PM, the admiral said:

I think Warriors ownership's table will be ready before Fisher can start sniffing around Portland or Salt Lake City.

 

4 hours ago, Ridleylash said:

Lacob's already expressed interest in the A's as far back as 2005, so I think he's perfectly happy with getting the A's.

 

I do not understand why so many people seem to be looking to Joe Lacob -- the man who moved the Warriors from an arena next to the Oakland Coliseum to their current venue in San Francisco -- as a potential savior of the A's, let alone as someone who would keep the A's in Oakland.  Yes, the Warriors have risen to probably their highest-ever levels of success both on and off the court while Lacob has been that team's principal owner.  However, that raises these two questions:

• If Lacob at least seemed to think that Oakland was not good enough for the Warriors, then why would he deem Oakland to be good enough for the A's?
• Between Lacob and his business partners moving the Dubs across the Bay and the present effort by John Fisher and his group to secure an escape from Oakland for the A's, why should Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and her allies trust Lacob as the main owner of the A's?

To be honest, if I were Sheng Thao, I would treat Joe Lacob and what he claims to want to do with the A's as if I have two daughters, Lacob was an awful boyfriend to my elder daughter, and I have just learned that Lacob wants to date my younger daughter right after she has undergone a painful breakup of her own.

[BBTV]

25 minutes ago, Walk-Off said:

The above two articles, both from last December, state that Rob Manfred told the media that the A's would not pay a relocation fee should they move to the Las Vegas area. 

 

It was the $500M-$1B figure I was doubting, not the waiver.  I'd wager that there's math that shows where the break-even point is if the other owners no longer had to pay these teams their revenue-sharing money in exchange for forgoing a relo fee, and it probably makes a lot of sense to make relocation as easy as possible.  But there's no source as to the amount - I think it's something that was made up out of thin air.  It's definitely been printed, but not validated by anyone that would know anything.

 

Relo fees are usually to either discourage owners from moving on a whim, or to compensate the other owners for losing something - whether perceived or real.  Like with the Rams - the owners were losing the ability to use LA as the bargaining chip to extort money from cities, as well as allowing one of their peers to exponentially increase the value of his franchise and be able to compete harder against them.  The reality is that they had milked the LA opening for as much as it could have been and someone was going to move there, but they wanted to be compensated.

 

In this case, I doubt there's a single owner that wouldn't want this situation figured out ASAP, and I don't think MLB is using LV as a bargaining chip.  It's A's or expansion... that's it.  While expansion would certainly line their pockets more, it's still costing everyone to keep the A's in Oakland.  I'm not sure where TB resides on the revenue-sharing list.

[kimball]

I wonder how many BINDING agreements one can have? Is this a record?

[GhostOfNormMacdonald]

 @kimball     I worked at a few law firms. The answer is, like so many things in life, "how rich are you?"  

 

Also. Can someone please fix typing on mobile I feel lime I'm going insane whenev Er I post

[WestCoastBias]

18 hours ago, Walk-Off said:

I do not understand why so many people seem to be looking to Joe Lacob -- the man who moved the Warriors from an arena next to the Oakland Coliseum to their current venue in San Francisco -- as a potential savior of the A's, let alone as someone who would keep the A's in Oakland.  Yes, the Warriors have risen to probably their highest-ever levels of success both on and off the court while Lacob has been that team's principal owner.  However, that raises these two questions:

• If Lacob at least seemed to think that Oakland was not good enough for the Warriors, then why would he deem Oakland to be good enough for the A's?
• Between Lacob and his business partners moving the Dubs across the Bay and the present effort by John Fisher and his group to secure an escape from Oakland for the A's, why should Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and her allies trust Lacob as the main owner of the A's?

 

I don't think the two situations are very comparable. Staying in Oakland was never a real option for the Warriors and I think most people at the time of the original announcement understood why.

 

Lacob's goal from day one was to make the Warriors one of the most valuable franchises in the league and that was never going to happen playing in Oakland (or so we thought). The Warriors represent the entire Bay Area and they wanted to play their games in the iconic city of the Bay Area, making them more marketable to fans and to free agents (which is an understandable premise). The plan was  for the Warriors to be playing in San Francisco in a world class arena (the Bay Area's own version of MSG or Staples Center) right when the team would hopefully start competing for championships (likely dropping the Golden State name for San Francisco too). Of course that's not what ended up happening as the arena got delayed and eventually changed locations while the team became one of the all time great dynasties and most valuable franchises anyway while still playing in Oakland which made the eventual move awkward. 

 

Lacob is on record saying that the A's should remain in Oakland. If he was to buy the team, I see no reason why he wouldn't pull out all the necessary stops to remain in Oakland and build a new ballpark on his dime.

[Walk-Off]

https://newballpark.org/2023/05/14/two-peas-in-a-decrepit-pod/

 

This article, the latest from a blog that has been covering the Athletics' ballpark quest since March 2005, contains some insightful observations of the current situations of both the A's and the Rays.  The "P.S." section of the article is particularly enlightening.

[Walk-Off]

On 5/14/2023 at 7:57 PM, BBTV said:

Relo fees are usually to either discourage owners from moving on a whim, or to compensate the other owners for losing something - whether perceived or real.  Like with the Rams - the owners were losing the ability to use LA as the bargaining chip to extort money from cities, as well as allowing one of their peers to exponentially increase the value of his franchise and be able to compete harder against them.  The reality is that they had milked the LA opening for as much as it could have been and someone was going to move there, but they wanted to be compensated.

 

In this case, I doubt there's a single owner that wouldn't want this situation figured out ASAP, and I don't think MLB is using LV as a bargaining chip.  It's A's or expansion... that's it.  While expansion would certainly line their pockets more, it's still costing everyone to keep the A's in Oakland.

 

I see no reason to disagree with any these points.  Even so, I have come across a fair number of comments elsewhere on the Internet that criticize MLB for not intending to impose a relocation fee on a move of the Athletics to the Las Vegas market.  Such disapprovals seem to be fueled mainly by (a) a concern that any future attempt to relocate an MLB franchise will include a demand that no relo fee be charged and/or (b) a belief that MLB team owners in general have a habitually stupid tendency to pass up opportunities to make money in ethical ways.

 

In particular, I agree with the notion that no one in MLB is likely to use Las Vegas as a bargaining chip.  This is because, personally, I believe that the Las Vegas area might have barely enough people to be able to host an MLB club profitably, but that region is still too small and is still too poor per capita to be an especially effective bargaining chip for an owner eager for a new ballpark deal in a team's existing home area.

 

On 5/15/2023 at 2:16 PM, WestCoastBias said:

Lacob is on record saying that the A's should remain in Oakland. If he was to buy the team, I see no reason why he wouldn't pull out all the necessary stops to remain in Oakland and build a new ballpark on his dime.

 

Joe Lacob can say whatever he wants to say about wanting the A's to stay in Oakland and at least being willing to keep the A's in Oakland should he ever buy that team.  However, as far as I can see, Lacob has done absolutely nothing so far that would back up such proclamations.  On the contrary, the Warriors' departure from Oakland under Lacob's ownership suggests to me that Lacob, like John Fisher, is likely to move the A's out of Oakland at the first possible opportunity.

 

Maybe Lacob chooses not to put the A's in a place that is at least a triple-digit number of miles away from Oakland.  Even so, I would not put it past Lacob to, for instance, mimic Fisher's past pursuit of a ballpark for the A's in San José so that, like the Warriors, the A's could play in a per-capita wealthier section of the Bay Area.  Furthermore, if Lacob is both richer and smarter than Fisher, he might offer the Giants an indemnity of many millions of dollars to let the A's into the South Bay at long last.  Anyone with a simple desire for the A's to stay in the overall Bay Area might be pleased with a San José home for the team, but I suspect that the most Oakland-centric fans of the A's will be quick to equate such a relocation with the Dubs' move to San Francisco, become furious toward Lacob, and allege that Lacob has betrayed Oakland once again.

 

Certainly, lots of A's fans and plenty of journalists and pundits who have been following the A's ballpark issue have every reason to be fed up with how Fisher and his underlings have run the team, to yearn for anyone or anything to prevent Fisher from taking the A's away from Oakland, and to plead for Fisher and his partners to sell the team as fast as possible.  However, I think that too many of these people are currently exhibiting an apparently blind and disturbingly naïve trust in Lacob's claims of wanting to keep the A's in Oakland.  If nothing else, I think that Sheng Thao and other powerful figures at Oakland's city hall might still be so bitter over their city's loss of the Warriors that they are far more skeptical of Lacob's words and, therefore, would demand that both Lacob and MLB agree to the most rigid commitments possible to have a Lacob-owned A's team stay within the Oakland city limits for multiple decades and to build any future home venue for the A's within Oakland's boundaries.

[GDAWG]