Get ready, Sacramento A’s fans, your MLB team is coming to town in 2025. Here’s your latest guide
The new year means a new Major League Baseball team in West Sacramento.
The Athletics are just months away from officially calling Sutter Health Park their home, and much has happened since the team made its intentions public last April to come to the capital region before their planned move to a new ballpark on the Las Vegas strip.
Many changes are being made to 10,000-seat Sutter Health Park to accommodate Major League Baseball in addition to hosting the Triple-A River Cats, the San Francisco Giants’ top minor league affiliate. For the time being, MLB created schedules for both teams that include no overlap. There will be no double-headers as long as Mother Nature keeps the rain away.
Let’s catch up on where things stand for the A’s ahead of their unprecedented temporary relocation and what 2025 holds for them.
Changes coming to the roster
The A’s surprised the baseball world in December by making their largest free-agent investment in club history in right-handed starting pitcher Luis Severino. The former Yankee and Met, who turns 31 in February, is expected to be in the mix to start opening night and provide an anchor to a rotation that ranked 19th in baseball in wins above average in 2024, according to Baseball Reference.
The team gave Severino a three-year, $67 million contract — $1 million more than Gold Glove third baseman Eric Chavez received from the team in 2004. Fans in Oakland were eager to relay their displeasure with the timing of the splurge ahead of the move to West Sacramento, while the team regularly had one of the lowest payrolls in baseball during its final years in Oakland.
Adding a pitcher with the All-Star upside like Severino could be important for a team that played .500 ball over the final 64 games of last season. The A’s haven’t finished above .500 since the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign.
“I think the way we finished the second half, we built a lot of momentum, and the young position player group kind of carried that momentum,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay told reporters at the MLB Winter Meetings in Dallas earlier this month. “We’ve still got a ways to go. And I think the signing of Severino shows the desire to accelerate that process and add to this group and show that they can compete in the second half.”
Severino wasn’t the only addition to the starters. The team also traded for Tampa Bay Rays lefty Jeffrey Springs, whom they believe could earn a spot atop the rotation if he stays healthy. Springs has a career 3.39 ERA over 145 big league appearances since 2018. His best season came in 2022 in Tampa when he started 25 games with eight outings in relief. He posted a 2.46 ERA with 144 strikeouts in 135.1 innings.
Springs had three strong outings to start 2023 before hurting his elbow and needing Tommy John surgery. The A’s are hoping giving Springs a full season can help regain his pre-surgery form.
The A’s most recent addition has been infielder Gio Urshela, 33, who will likely fill the opening at third base. Urshela was once among the most productive third basemen in baseball with the Yankees in 2019 when he hit .314/.355/.534 with 21 home runs. His .968 fielding percentage ranks fifth among active third basemen.
With those additions, along with promising sluggers Brent Rooker and Shea Langaliers, the A’s will be more competitive, on paper, in 2025 than when they averaged more than 100 losses over the past three seasons.
“It’s a different level of expectation going into Spring Training,” Kotsay said. “With the group that we have, I know there’s going to be bumps because they still are young. ... The goal is to get these guys as consistent as possible as quickly as possible. If that happens, I think we have a definite opportunity to make some noise in the division and compete with teams like Houston and Seattle.”
What’s new at Sutter Health Park
Changes have been underway at the River Cats’ home since their season ended in September. The most notable developments include building a new, two-story clubhouse beyond the left field wall that will house the A’s, upgrading the visiting clubhouse, weight rooms, batting cages, dugouts and bullpens. Exactly what’s being done will be revealed closer to the start of the season when the A’s host the the Chicago Cubs in their home opener March 31.
What remains unclear is what happens should the A’s shock baseball and make the playoffs. Season ticket holders have been told playoff games are not guaranteed to take place at Sutter Health Park because it lacks the necessary amenities — such as press seating, news conference space and parking for TV trucks — for what MLB calls “jewel events.” There’s no word on what alternative sites could be used for the postseason should the A’s qualify.
On the team’s website, the A’s said: “In collaboration with MLB, we hope to bring postseason games to Sacramento. If “home” games are played at an alternate location, A’s season ticket members will have priority to purchase tickets.”
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The most logical turnkey option would be Oracle Park in San Francisco while the team’s old home, the Oakland Coliseum, will be the home venue of the Oakland Roots soccer team, meaning it won’t likely have a baseball diamond.
The uncertainty surrounding the postseason hasn’t done much to quell interest in tickets. Premium tickets near home plate and the dugouts, which include access to club areas, sold out quickly. The team is expecting to sell out its standard season tickets that will be available until Jan. 9.
Premium tickets were believed to run from $15,000 to $20,000 per seat, per season and include parking, food and beverage. Standard tickets range from $39 to $170 per seat, according to the team’s website.
The controversies
Multiple stalled stadium proposals, broken down relationships with Oakland officials, trading away far more star players than they brought in, raising season ticket prices, a decision to leave a top-10 media market in the Bay Area for No. 40 in Las Vegas — by way of No. 20 in Sacramento, Stockton and Modesto — have had the A’s embroiled in controversy for years.
How things will go in Sacramento is a Tower Bridge-sized question mark. The A’s are partnering with the River Cats — who are owned by Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé — to host Major League Baseball’s richest players in a stadium with 10,000 fixed seats and a 14,000-person capacity factoring the grass area in right field.
The first controversy involving the relocation included the initial plan to play on synthetic turf to account for wear and tear. Baseball mega-agent Scott Boras, a Sacramento and Elk Grove native, publicly criticized the plans for turf and indicated he would object to his clients playing on it. Since then, the plans for turf were scrapped and it was determined a grass field and new irrigation system could be installed to handle two baseball teams.
The concerns
How will players adjust to Sutter Health Park?
As previously mentioned, the clubhouses are beyond the outfield wall. So players cannot discretely go from the dugout to their locker without a long walk through the field of play. All Major League stadiums have their clubhouses tucked behind the dugouts underneath grandstands.
The difference in clubhouse location will likely become most visible during games when players get ejected for arguing with umpires. Instead of a quick exit to the dugout, they will have to take a 400-foot walk of shame with plenty of time to hear from heckling fans.
The same is true for batting cages, which are typically close to the dugout allowing players to get some swings in before entering the game. The new batting cages and weight rooms will adjoin the clubhouses beyond the outfield.
Will the amenities be up to par?
The A’s, the Major League Baseball Players Association and the league have been in regular communication regarding the improvements being made to the ballpark. Everything has been agreed upon by all sides, so players shouldn’t be blindsided by anything at Sutter Health Park.
How hot will it be in the summer?
Sacramento is coming off one of the hottest summers on record, which included July being the hottest month on since 1877. July had the most 100-, 105- and 110-degree in 147 years. Suffice to say, the decision to go with natural grass instead of artificial turf, which can be 20 to 30 degrees warmer, seems like a good one.
The future of the team in Las Vegas... or Sacramento?
The A’s long-term plans took a step toward coming to fruition on Dec. 5 when the Las Vegas Stadium Authority voted to approve a 30-year lease, non-relocation and development documents required before construction could begin on the former site of the Tropicana Resort on the southern end of the strip.
The team hopes to open the $1.75-billion stadium by 2028, meaning they would stay in Sacramento on a temporary basis for three years (there’s an optional agreement for a fourth year in Sacramento should the stadium not be ready in time).
The Las Vegas Stadium Authority was presented with documents providing proof principal owner John Fisher and his family could provide their portion of funding the stadium along with loan commitments from U.S. Bank and Goldman Goldman Sachs. The A’s hope construction begins during the first quarter of 2025.
But shovels can’t begin moving dirt until extensive construction documents are agreed upon, and there’s been no indication of when that will come.
And should the Las Vegas stadium plan get drawn out or derailed altogether, there’s a chance that Sacramento could be home to the A’s for longer than anticipated.
David Samson, the former team president of the Miami Marlins who helped build their new stadium in Little Havana now called LoanDepot Park, said Sacramento could make a power play to keep the A’s or become a viable expansion candidate.
“The A’s would not stay in Sacramento in Sacramento’s Triple-A ballpark,” Sampson said in a phone interview. “Now, could Sacramento build a Major League ballpark and keep a baseball team? There’s certainly people who would view what’s happening now as a good test case of whether or not a team could generate the local revenue required to support baseball permanently, and it wouldn’t surprise me if business leaders in Sacramento were trying to make that happen, and it wouldn’t surprise me if baseball was comparing what that would look like to Vegas, where you could keep Vegas as an expansion market instead of a relocation market.
“But on the other side,” Samson continued, “I would tell you that if Sacramento shows to be a great market, and the A’s do move to Vegas, then Sacramento becomes a possibility for expansion. So either way it’s important for Sacramento to show itself as a big league market or not. That will be very informative to baseball and what it does.”
This story was originally published December 26, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
