A's GM David Forst on adjusting to Sacramento's park factors in 2025

Jason Burke | Oct 7, 2024

Sep 21, 2024; Oakland, California, USA; Oakland Athletics pitcher JP Sears (38) delivers a pitch against the New York Yankees in the first inning at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images / Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images

With the A's slated to move up north to Sacramento for the next three of four seasons beginning with the 2025 season, one question has been on my mind of late, and that has been how the team will adjust to playing in a different ballpark after calling the Oakland Coliseum home for 57 seasons. The Coliseum offered pitchers plenty of help with more foul territory that any other ballpark, along with a nice marine layer that would settle in at night.

Those factors won't be available to the pitchers in Sacramento, where the A's will be playing in an "intimate" minor league ballpark.

I had asked some of the players about some adjustments they could make heading into 2025, and Mason Miller talked about pitching down in the zone a little more to try and keep the ball in the ballpark, a strategy that was echoed with a couple of other pitchers on the roster. One thing that I kept hearing was that pitchers have seen a ball with a 92 mile per hour exit velocity leave the park. Typically the exit velocity for a home run at the Coliseum would have to be in around 105 mph.

That's great for hitters, not so great for the pitchers. JP Sears said, "hopefully it helps us a little more than it'll hurt us," when speaking about playing in a new facility.

I was also able to ask A's GM David Forst if the team is planning on making adjustments to how the club prepares this winter so that they're ready for the challenges that Sacramento has to offer, perhaps having a contact hitter add a little lift to their swing to rack up a few more homers?

"I would put this in the big bucket of things that are uncertain; how that ballpark is going to play. We've obviously done a lot of work over the last few months trying to do the translation. It's not as easy as how does it play as a Triple-A ballpark. Our initial read is that it's not quite the hitter's ballpark that it has a reputation of being."

About a month ago, Ross Stripling talked to A's on SI about playing big-league games in a minor-league facility as a member of the 2020 Toronto Blue Jays. Among one of the many takeaways, he mentioned that it'll add a few home runs to the totals of guys like Brent Rooker, who finished with 39 dingers in 2024.

Forst also mentioned that the pitch to attract pitchers will be a little more difficult at Sutter Health Park than it was at the Coliseum. "It was really easy to go, whether it was free agency or what, and go and say, 'Hey, this is a great place to pitch.' Like unequivocally, all the objective numbers say the Coliseum is great for pitchers. That probably isn't going to be the case in Sutter Health."

Mark Kotsay also expressed a desire to add more "swing-and-miss" ability to the pitching staff for the 2025 season, which would make sense since giving up decent contact could be a tricky proposition in the new ballpark.

In terms of tweaking the players that the team already has either on the 26-man roster or in the minors, Forst said that the team's philosophy isn't to preach launch angle "and things like that." Instead, they'll be looking for the best players they can attract this winter with the goal of reaching .500, and potentially pushing for a spot in the postseason if things break right.

"I'm not sure there's anything definitive about this ballpark that we can say, yeah, we'll go into our either player development or our free agency. We're we're still at the point where we're just looking for the best players."

The A's payroll is also expected to increase in 2025.