What's next for the Oakland A'...

When club president Dave Kaval revealed that the Oakland Athletics had agreed to buy a piece of property for a future ballpark in Las Vegas, the tragic stadium narrative took a new turn. It's not finalized, but the way forward is unmistakably Las Vegas given club owner John Fisher's protracted dispute with Oakland city authorities and the Coliseum's decline into a possum- and sewage-infested shambles.

MLB supports the A's relocation plan. In a quote right out of ChatGPT Manfred, Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters on Monday that "Las Vegas will present a real revenue-enhancing opportunity."

And while there are opportunities, going to Las Vegas is by no means a cure-all (although you might argue that there have been opportunities in Oakland for years if Fisher had been prepared to invest a bit more on the club). The A's this season are a disgrace; they are 5-18 and have a run differential of -102, which is nearly twice as awful as the next-worst MLB team. Furthermore, it's difficult to predict how well any baseball club, much less a bad one, will do in Nevada.

There are certain important issues that need to be addressed even if the Las Vegas A's become a reality. Let's list five significant ones.

How long — and how bleak — will the lame duck period in Oakland be?

In their relocation news rollout, A’s leadership told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the goal would be to break ground on the new ballpark — a 30,000-seat venue with a partially retractable roof to mitigate the scorching desert sun — in 2024 and open it in 2027. That's all well and good, except for the part where the team’s current lease at the Coliseum runs out in 2024.

Now, I’m sure someone has joked that no home at all would be better than the crusty husk of a baseball facility that is the Coliseum, but practically, that's not really the case!

Three main options have emerged in the initial reporting about Oakland’s plan:

Renew the lease at the Coliseum: This is perhaps the most realistic but also the most depressing. Attendance in Oakland, as you might've heard, is low. "The team is bad, the stadium is bad, and we’re trying to leave" isn't exactly a winning marketing pitch. Last season, the A’s brought up the rear in MLB attendance at 9,849 fans per home game. This season, they’re also last at 11,026, and that figures to go down.

Excising the pandemic-suppressed 2020 and '21 seasons, the 2022 A’s accounted for three of the 10 least-attended MLB games since the 1995 strike, and the 2023 A’s already logged a new entry in the “top 15” when 3,035 people showed up to watch a matchup with the Guardians on April 3. The next night, their 3,407-person crowd was topped by 11 Triple-A teams. That was before the relocation news dropped.

Move to Las Vegas and play in a Triple-A park: The A’s already have a foothold in Las Vegas with their Triple-A affiliate. The Aviators play in 10,000-seat Las Vegas Ballpark, which opened in 2019. The major-league team reportedly has an agreement in place allowing the option of taking over that park while the new stadium is under construction, and Kaval told the New York Times that is an option for the A’s.

Share Oracle Park with the San Francisco Giants: This is the most extreme option, and it has surfaced mainly because of a report that MLB was willing to facilitate a short-term stadium-sharing arrangement back in 2013.

Can the A’s field a competent on-field product for a Las Vegas debut?

Whether the A’s migrate to Nevada in 2024 or 2027, the likelihood of a contender taking the field looks slim. After years of cycling through cheap but competitive cores, the A's front office — led by GM David Forst — has hit a rut that’s quickly turning into a gaping pit. Setting aside, for a moment, the cynicism of never retaining homegrown stars, the A’s were often successful at replenishing their major-league roster with talent until this latest teardown.

In ridding themselves of Matt Chapman, Matt Olson, Frankie Montas and Sean Murphy, the A’s landed next to nothing — catcher Shea Langeliers is the best of the group right now — in deals that perplexed the industry even as they happened. In this offseason’s jettisoning of Murphy, the A's went out of their way to acquire fast but punchless center fielder Esteury Ruiz from the Milwaukee Brewers, while the Braves (frequent beneficiaries of Oakland’s penny-pinching) sent young All-Star William Contreras to Milwaukee. In a previous deal with Atlanta (Olson), the A's focused on defense-first center fielder Cristian Pache. He batted .166/.218/.241 in 91 games last season, and the A’s cut bait this spring.

Is Las Vegas actually a viable baseball market?

One thing many people are skipping over is the matter of whether Las Vegas is even a better host for a baseball team than Oakland. Certainly, other pro sports leagues are betting on Vegas — the NHL’s Golden Knights began play there with a bang in 2017, and the Raiders made their trek from Oakland in 2020 — but their viability is not an apples-to-apples ticket to blank checks and glory.

The Golden Knights are an almost impossible comparison because they benefited from an extremely favorable expansion draft, soaring to a historic first season and racking up fans by reaching the Stanley Cup Final. The A’s, as established, stand a better chance at different forms of history, such as breaking the all-time losses record or playing the first modern game open to the public with more people in the dugouts than the stands.

Will playing in Las Vegas bring Rockies-style altitude problems?

Righting this ship will require some good marketing, a long-awaited new ballpark and all those things, but it will also require winning. The A’s did a fair amount of that prior to this recent rough patch, yet there are some roadblocks that await in Las Vegas.

Specifically, the same problem the Colorado Rockies have been dealing with since their inception: altitude. Denver’s thinner air has consistently wreaked havoc on pitcher development and on hitters who struggle to adjust to road environments where the ball moves differently.

Would Oakland or San Jose become candidates for expansion?

Looking beyond the A’s, their relocation would cross off one major hurdle to MLB expansion. Manfred has said the A’s and Tampa Bay Rays stadium situations need to be resolved first, but ultimately, he would like to see a 32-team league. Realignment would likely go along with that effort, and a certain geographic balance seems desirable.

If Las Vegas is already taken, that eliminates the West Coast’s most prominent expansion favorite. While Nashville, Charlotte and Montreal all stake claims to potential teams, it seems likely that MLB would consider another western city. Portland could fill that void, as could the recently announced effort in Salt Lake City, but there’s also the chance for the Bay Area to reassert itself as a two-team region. If Oakland’s long-negotiated Howard Terminal project could come to fruition more smoothly without Fisher and the A’s in the picture, perhaps it could lure a team under different ownership. The Giants, meanwhile, have long guarded against competition in San Jose, but expansion might force a tougher conversation there than the Athletics' ambitions ever did.

It’s more likely that MLB looks elsewhere, that Fisher drives big-league baseball out of the East Bay entirely, but the area would have considerably more appeal if it were out from under the shadow of this particular saga.