A's May Not Stay in Oakland Even if Las Vegas Deal Falls Apart?

Something just isn't adding up with some comments made during the joint session in Nevada

The A's ballpark saga added another potential gut punch for fans during the joint session hearing for SB 509 on Monday night. The Nevada Senate Finance and Ways and Means Committees were able to ask representatives of the A's questions, and Senator Harris simply asked "If this plan was not approved, is it the A's Plan B to stay in Oakland?"

Jeremy Aguero, responded first. "Senator Harris, for the record Jeremy Aguero. They've never indicated as such. Obviously this is the plan that they're looking to be able to accomplish, but it's never been discussed or stated that way."

Aguero is the principal owner of Applied Analysis, a data research company that helped land the Raiders in Las Vegas. He was there representing one of his clients, the Oakland A's. 

He then clarified his statement, saying that he doesn't know what the plan would be. "If this plan doesn't work, they've gotta start developing a new plan."

It was at this point that some strong words for Oakland hopefuls came into play. Steve Hill, the CEO and President of Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, jumped in to clarify the A's stance. 

"If this agreement does not go through, they will look for other cities to move to. They will not decide to stay, even if this does not go through." 

“If this plan was not approved, is it the A’s plan B to stay in Oakland?” pic.twitter.com/9xxQq3er42

— Casey Pratt (@CaseyAPratt) May 30, 2023

On its face, that's a pretty harsh statement to hear for A's fans that want the team to stay in Oakland. 

That could be by design. 

The remaining fans have been very vocal at games, chanting "sell!" and displaying banners calling team president Dave Kaval a liar and owner John Fisher a thief. The hope with that statement could be to try and crush the spirit of the remaining fans to make a relocation effort easier.

Some on the Nevada legislature even commented on getting plenty of calls and emails from people in Oakland imploring them to vote no on the proposed bill. This could be an effort to quell those efforts. 

It's also an odd statement, because everyone knows that the A's need a ballpark deal to work out relatively soon. Not only do they need to secure a binding agreement for a venue by January of 2024 to continue to receive revenue sharing checks, but the timeline that was given for a potential Las Vegas ballpark to open during the joint session was in time for the 2028 season. The A's lease at the Coliseum ends after the 2024 season. 

If they're not playing in a Triple-A ballpark in Sacramento or Las Vegas, then where else would they be playing games? It took the team two years of work in Vegas to get to this point. Would it not take a similarly long time to get situated in a different city? Push that timeline back to 2030 at the earliest if they're not looking at Vegas or Oakland. That's five seasons to find a home to play Major League Baseball. 

Not even entertaining Oakland as an option doesn't make sense as a negotiation tactic, honestly. It's just an odd statement thrown in there, but what was the purpose of it? If anything it hurt the team's leverage with the city of Las Vegas in these negotiations, because there is no set fallback plan. "It could be Portland, or Salt Lake City, or Montreal, who knows!" isn't a great ploy to get people to vote for your bill. 

If you take what was said at face value, the A's are through with Oakland. 

But if you think about the why, it just doesn't add up. Maybe that's because the backup plan is to finally sell the team. Maybe John Fisher is done with Oakland, but he's not likely to keep this search up much longer, either. 

If Las Vegas blows up in his face he's going to have a difficult time finding a city to give him the public assistance he's looking for after being rejected by Vegas and walking out of negotiations with Oakland. Usually where there's a will there's a way, but John Fisher has never shown the will to get something done.