A's President Dave Kaval Spouts Same Talking Points for New Audience

A's President Dave Kaval spoke with the Nevada media, spitting his same talking points and bold claims

Dave Kaval has come out from the wilderness and has emerged spouting the same talking points as he has for years, only this time he's trying to get the Las Vegas market excited about his product instead of Oakland. 

In April 2022, Kaval told Bill Shaikin that the A's would be in the top-ten in payroll once a ballpark was built in Oakland. He even said the likelihood of that happening was "100%." That's as high as percentages go. 

On Tuesday, here is what he told the Nevada Independent. “You wouldn't invest in the stadium like that, and also not invest in the quality of the product,” Kaval said. “So that's something that we really want to reiterate and I think will be an important aspect as we launch the team in Vegas.”

Jon Ralston, the founder of the Nevada Independent, used a couple of quotes from the article on his site on social media, including part of the one above, and asked the question: "How will A's fans take it?" 

To answer his question, the response online has been disbelief. Not because the fans are wondering "Why not us? Why not here?" Instead, they just flat-out don't believe the words that Dave Kaval says. 

To that point, John Fisher literally bought a baseball team and never invested in the product on the field. He's also let the Oakland Coliseum show its age instead of hiding some blemishes like Dodger Stadium or Angel Stadium, which are also older ballparks, but nobody is calling them a dump. The largest contract that he handed out and paid in full was Billy Butler at three years, $30 million. Eric Chavez's six years, $66 million is still the highest in franchise history, but was agreed to before Fisher bought the team. Khris Davis was signed to a larger deal (2/$33.5M) but he was traded before that second year.

In an era of inflation and rising contract totals, Fisher has managed to not hand out a single long-term deal of any significance. The A's are running a payroll right around $59 million this season. The league average payroll is $164.2 million. In order to get to even that level, FIsher would have to spend $105 million more on the roster than he currently is. 

That would also have to happen while financing this brand new ballpark which will cost him at least $1.1 billion. The Indy also reported that the team is working with Goldman Sachs, which had been reported previously, on a combination of debt and equity financing. That means that some of the money will be a regular loan, which would be paid back with interest, and that he will also be selling a stake in the team. How large the stake will be is not known. 

They also added in the wrinkle that the Fisher family would also be helping pay for some of the project. 

This is John Fisher, born into billions, and then having his ballpark at least partially paid for by his family. This is the person that Nevadans are supposed to believe will be putting up big money to sign the biggest free agents in baseball. Again, he is reportedly set to sell a stake in the team, is getting help from his family on the project, and will have a massive loan out, but will still find the money to put up an extra $100 million per year to have just a league average payroll. We all remember how Rob Manfred feels about things that are league average. 

Kaval also said Tuesday that the stadium would have 33,000 seats, up 3,000 seats from the previously announced plans.

This could be a medium-sized deal since he's on the record saying it'll officially be 33,000 seats. This is something that has been floated around for a few weeks now, but hadn't been uttered by anyone affiliated with the A's (partially because none of them are talking) until now. That would help slightly with being able to reach that 28,000 figure they need every night for 30 years in order to meet their goals on the project. 

Now if there is a game that has attendance of 10,000 on a 120 degree summer day with the Kansas City Royals, the team can sell an extra 3,000 tickets to a game against the New York Yankees and still be off the mark, but not by quite as much. Better hope there aren't multiple hot days against non-premier opponents or else they may have an issue making up those attendance numbers.

The added seats also figure to either make the design more cramped from a fan perspective as they try to cram more seats onto a nine acre piece of land, or less architecturally pleasing. For context, Mount Davis holds 20,000 seats and took out the entire view of the Oakland hills. So we're not talking about blocking out the view of the Strip here, but that may be another issue that needs to be addressed. 

The yet-to-be-determined design team will also have to figure out how to orient the ballpark towards the Strip. Not because that would be difficult, but because baseball fields don't face the west since batters can't look directly into the sun when games are played. Even the MLB rulebook has a note on how ballparks should be oriented (East by Northeast). The Strip is to the Northwest of where the A's will be building the park on the Southeast corner of the Tropicana site. 

It's a good thing that nothing about this project has been rushed in any way and that John Fisher and Dave Kaval, are leading the charge, or else people might have some concerns.