A's President Dave Kaval Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Oakland A's President Dave Kaval finally spoke to the media after months of silence--and didn't do himself or the team any favors

On Wednesday night I was talking to a friend that is a San Francisco Giants fan. He mentioned that Shohei Ohtani was pitching against his team, so I asked if he thought Ohtani would sign with the Giants in the off-season. "I hope so!" was followed quickly by "Maybe he'll be the face of the new Las Vegas Athletics?" For many Oakland A's fans, this would be the worst-case scenario. 

After years of putting up with trade after trade of fan-favorite players and with ownership never investing in the team to get them over the top, to then see John Fisher go out and sign the biggest free agent of all-time as he rips the team out of Oakland would be the turd on top of this crap sandwich. 

Luckily for A's fans, Dave Kaval spoke with the media for the first time since the Vegas announcement in April and put the worst-case scenario fever dreams at bay. Shayna Rubin of the Mercury News Group got him on the record saying, "'The revenue share was an important financial contribution to fielding a product on the field,” Kaval said, citing the team’s success over the years on a shoestring budget. “So yes, it was a material factor in terms of the deadline.'"

There is a lot more in this article that is noteworthy, so check it out, but I wanted to focus on this specific quote. Dave Kaval, the president of the A's, basically admits that they need revenue sharing to field the 33-82 club that they have now. While he doesn't explicitly say it, it's known that the team would receive more in revenue sharing if/when they relocate to Las Vegas because of the market size, which would be the smallest in baseball. 

This is an admission that John Fisher does not plan to change course once he gets the ballpark he's been searching for, but that isn't really a surprise given that the San Jose Earthquakes, the Major League Soccer team that the Gap baby also owns, has mostly languished towards the bottom in league payroll since they got their new stadium back in 2015. 

In MLS, the salaries aren't even as high as they are in baseball. The top-spending team right now is Inter Miami CF at roughly $80 million, with soccer icon Lionel Messi's contract accounting for between $50-60 million of that figure. The second-highest team payroll is Toronto FC at $20 million. 

The Earthquakes currently rank 22nd out of 29 teams in payroll at just under $11 million, but if they had spent just $2 million more, they'd be ranked 15th. At $4 million more the club would be ranked 10th. In baseball contracts, that's nothing. The return on investment may be a little higher in baseball, but Fisher also hasn't shown a willingness to follow the old adage "you have to spend money to make money." 

He obviously doesn't care about the outcomes of the team on the field, either. If he did, he would have invested a little more into the 2020 and 2021 A's teams when they had a real shot at contention. Instead, he offered hometown hero Marcus Semien a one year, $12.5 million salary with $10 million of it deferred and to be paid in $1 million increments for ten years. Semien instead signed with the Toronto Blue Jays for $18 million (paid in full), had a monster year, and then signed with the Texas Rangers for seven years, $175 million. 

Those A's teams could have made deep runs with a couple of additions to the roster, and a deep playoff run would have brought more fans to the ballpark, while also increasing season ticket sales and merchandise sales. He would have made plenty. But Fisher has never wanted to invest. 

Now he has to put up at least $1.1 billion to build this tiny (excuse me, intimate) ballpark that may or may not have a dome on top of it on land he doesn't own with no room for ancillary developments. Even if his plan is to "pump and dump," or basically increase the value of the franchise with a new ballpark and then sell the team--wouldn't the Howard Terminal project be more appealing to potential investors interested in owning a baseball team? 

Kaval also seemed to contradict himself in the interview, at one point saying that the A's new ballpark plans in Oakland, whether at Laney College or Howard Terminal, were "practically dead on arrival." He goes on to say that the A's were the only one of the three teams (with the Raiders and Warriors) to try to stay in Oakland "and maybe that made it worse. It’s all about hope. People got excited it could happen. We got excited it could happen."

So at which point exactly were they excited that the project could happen if it was basically dead on arrival? 

The quotes about the A's admitting to needing revenue sharing and essentially intending to stay on it forever should make a couple of owners think twice about voting to approve relocation. Add that to the pile of reasons owners could vote "no" like the A's leaving the Bay Area, which hurts the entire NL West by leaving the Giants alone in one of the biggest markets in the game while the Padres, Dodgers, and Angels all share Southern California. 

Will those reasons sway any owners? Probably not. They're focused on getting the league to expansion and getting those big expansion checks--but that can't happen until the A's and Tampa Bay Rays have their ballpark situations figured out. 

One thing is certain however, and that is how turned off to baseball many fans have become in watching this process play out with how blatant the disregard is for the fans that are having their team ripped away from them just so that John Fisher can still collect his revenue sharing.