What We Learned From Wednesday's A's/Las Vegas Announcement

The joint announcement was basically public relations work filled with things we'd heard already

What did we learn from Wednesday's joint announcement? In short, nothing. 

The joint announcement consisted of quotes from the people working to get the deal done in Las Vegas, including Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, A's President Dave Kaval, along with a quote attributed to "Clark County" since nobody wanted to put their name behind the words being used for their statement. 

The joint announcement also came with promises, like "over the time we have remaining during this session, we will give this proposal a thorough vetting to fully explore the opportunity and its impacts on Southern Nevada." There are just 12 days left in the current session; eight if you take away weekends. 

That reads as though this project is going to be pushed through. 

The joint statement does a lot of touting the deal that has been tentatively agreed to, but answers precisely zero questions about whether or not property taxes will go up if the A's fail to meet their projected goals, how they'll be addressing traffic concerns for local residents, how a retractable roof will fit on nine acres, and a myriad of other questions that have been asked. 

Instead, they focused more on how they played hard ball and they didn't cave to the A's demands. "As a part of the proposed legislation, the public-private partnership includes public financing constituting less than 25 percent of the cost, making it the third-lowest public share of cost for the 14 Major League Baseball stadiums built this century." They fail to mention that the A's got a relocation fee worth about $500 million waived by MLB, they have the lowest payroll in baseball, the product they plan to import is on pace to be historically bad, and that the valuable land on The Strip was given to them for free. If not for all of those factors, the asking price for the smallest ballpark in baseball would have been a lot higher, but you can make math do pretty much anything you want when you remove some variables.

So what did we learn? Not much. 

All of the statements below are words that have been floated around for the past two weeks. The biggest takeaway here is that it would appear as though they're at least presenting all of these different factions being on the same page at present. That's something that wasn't necessarily a given before the statement, but the fact that the quote from Clark County is just attributed to Clark County does leave one to wonder if they're fully on board. 

Again, the viability of this project is going to be determined by what is in this long-awaited bill. Are the A's backing any overages? Is there a scenario in which taxes will be raised on the general public to help fund any shortfalls? Those are reportedly two of the big questions we're looking for answers on in this upcoming legislation. 

The A's have the bases loaded with two out in the bottom of the ninth. The team on the field is batting .196 with runners in scoring position and two out this season, but maybe John Fisher will actually spend some money to improve those odds for once.