If the A's Want to Extend Their Lease at the Coliseum, Oakland's Mayor Has Some Demands

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao just made the right move

This week a lot of the talk around the A's has been about where they'll end up playing in the interim three seasons (at least) once their lease expires at the Oakland Coliseum, but before their proposed Vegas ballpark opens in 2028. Team president Dave Kaval laid out three primary options: the Coliseum, Oracle Park in San Francisco, and Las Vegas Ballpark where their Triple-A affiliate plays. 

The Vegas plan seems like the furthest bet for two reasons: the Player's Association wouldn't be on board with their members playing in a minor league ballpark for three seasons in the desert heat, and if the A's leave the Bay Area, they lose out on their $60 million annual check from the Regional Sports Network deal they have.

When it comes to Oracle, John Shea of the Chronicle wrote, "according to an industry source, the idea of the A’s playing a limited number of games — as many as 40 — in a season at Oracle Park has been floated around Third and King, with the Giants possibly amenable to hosting a portion of the A’s home schedule."

With 40 games on the table, the A's would need to split time between multiple ballparks, which can also be costly with moving back and forth in the middle of the season. 

So that leaves the Coliseum, which the A's have been desperately attempting to leave since John Fisher came aboard in 2005. Yet, over the last few of months since the team announced their move they haven't exactly been taking responsibility for the team's potential relocation, instead blaming the city of Oakland for not doing enough to cater to their whims. Oakland has reportedly raised around a billion dollars in combined off-site and on-site infrastructure funding. If you can't get something done with a billion dollars in handouts, that's on you. 

The Coliseum site seems like the best fit from a practical standpoint, but it would be a tough sell for the city and the county to agree to let the team extend their lease after how things have transpired of late. 

According to the Chronicle, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao has already sent MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred her list of demands in order to extend the lease at the Coliseum. "Those demands could include a provision that the A’s leave their name rooted in Oakland when they go. Or, even bigger, the city could extract a guarantee of being awarded a new team when baseball expands, as it expects to do fairly soon."

Every time the fans want Mayor Thao to do something, she comes out swinging. This is absolutely the right move. The city has no incentive to extend the lease. There are groups waiting to develop that land and actually do something for the city, but they're waiting on the A's to leave first. Why cater to the A's any more? 

It's not necessarily likely that this ends up with Oakland getting an expansion team out of this, however. From MLB's perspective, with teams threatening to relocate left and right, they need to use Oakland as an example to force other municipalities into capitulating to their desires. If Oakland lost their team but was granted an expansion team, that leverage in every other city would be gone. There's also the fact that the league would have just ripped up and moved a team that has been in Oakland for nearly 60 years because the owner said the market wasn't viable. How could they relocate the A's and then still think that Oakland was deserving of a team? 

And that is where things get a little murky.

If the interim venues are truly just those three, then there isn't a lot of wiggle room. Either MLB grants Oakland an expansion franchise with the A's name while losing the team's history, they get a grievance filed by the Player's Union for the minor league proposal, or John Fisher works out a deal to make Oracle work for 81 games. 

Right now, that last option feels like the scariest one for A's fans. The Giants would love to be rid of the A's and have the market all to themselves, so it would be in their best interest to help the A's out...the door. 

Yet, every team in the NL West should already be against the Giants getting such a large market all to themselves, and if they were to help the one team in their market leave town, that may not sit well with other owners, on top of the A's continuing to receive revenue sharing by being in a smaller market in Las Vegas. This is why it's important to know where the A's will be playing their games from 2025-2027 before the owners vote on relocation, because they could go from on the fence to a hard no with a wrinkle like that thrown in. 

These demands throw in a twist and signal to Major League Baseball that Oakland will not be going down without a fight. When Dave Kaval took over as team president, the team unveiled the slogan "Rooted in Oakland" to signal the team's commitment to staying in the East Bay. Now it's Sheng Thao that is trying to keep the A's name rooted while John Fisher and Dave Kaval go on their merry way.