Ken Rosenthal, Jeff Passan Share Doubts on A's Relocation to Las Vegas
Over the first two days of the week, the biggest names in MLB media, Ken Rosenthal and Jeff Passan, each released articles detailing some of their concerns with the A's move to Las Vegas.
Passan provided a bit of a rundown of where we're at, but he also included this tidbit that hadn't been reported anywhere, saying, "...the Oakland A's were supposed to have figured out by the end of December where they'll play in 2025 and beyond before moving to Las Vegas in 2028. That didn't happen. A mid-January deadline passed. Soon enough an end-of-January target will, too."
These are deadlines being imposed by Major League Baseball that A's owner John Fisher is just blowing through. So far, the league has given him the green light on everything when it comes to the team's relocation. A question that has circulated on A's Twitter for months now is how long Baseball will allow this charade to keep going on without stepping in. With a few more passed deadlines maybe we'll find out.
Rosenthal mentioned a number of points the A's have made that he's just not buying, including President Dave Kaval's repeated claims that payroll will be much higher than it is now. He even talked with Kaval last weekend, who told him, "We expect to have a competitive payroll that is going to enable us to have the resources necessary to field a competitive team, year in and year out."
Read that quote again.
Their plan is to pump money into the payroll, something they never tried in Oakland by the way, and then that increased payroll will allow them to have the resources they need for a higher payroll. Feels a bit like a chicken and the egg situation.
Both articles are great and definitely worth checking out, but the key takeaway here is that these were written with a day of each other. This type of incompetence has been around throughout the entire relocation process, so why now? Sure, it's been a relatively slow off-season, but this almost feels orchestrated. Like someone isn't happy that this isn't resolved yet. It could be that there is now pressure from MLB to, pardon the pun, get a move on.
It's also possible that the clip that went viral last week of the emcee at the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce asking if the crowd was still alive after welcoming the Las Vegas A's got each of them to look into things a little deeper on their own. It could also be a pure coincidence.
But if the A's relocation is something that the League is now willing to talk about openly, it could spell doom for the A's relocation to Las Vegas unless Fisher and the A's start clearing every hurdle the rest of the way.