Last week, Nevada governor Joe Lombardo signed a bill authorizing $380 million in public funding designated to help build a new ballpark near the Las Vegas Strip for the Athletics. While the other MLB franchise owners still have to sign off on the move, that development was the latest in a string that has the Athletics on the verge of becoming the first team to relocate outside of their state since the Montreal Expos moved to Washington, D.C., in 2004.
Predictably, various members from the Athletics' past have since voiced their opinions on the matter, including former managers Art Howe and Bob Melvin, as well as New York Yankees third baseman Josh Donaldson. Howe and Melvin combined to serve as Oakland's skipper for parts of 18 seasons. Donaldson, meanwhile, played in parts of four seasons with the A's.
Whereas Howe and Melvin mostly centered their comments on the fan base ("I really feel for the fans [because] they deserve a team," Howe said; Melvin, for his part, told NBC Sports Bay Area that a move would be "sad"), Donaldson took aim at how the A's have conducted business -- specifically, with how ownership has imposed financial restraints that have caused them to trade away star after star over the years.
"As an organization throughout the years, I don't know how much they've tried to build a fanbase," Donaldson also told NBC Sports Bay Area. He added: "You're talking about one of the largest markets in baseball in the Bay Area. It gets perceived as a small-market team, but it's only a small market because of what the team is willing to put out there. One of the wealthiest owners in all of baseball owns the A's."
Our own Dayn Perry recently broke down how the A's reached this point, and wrote the following of owner John Fisher:
This is an owner who, since buying out managing partner Lew Wolff after the 2016 season, has never run a payroll that ranked higher than 23rd among MLB's 30 franchises. On average, they've ranked 27th under Fisher. The largest free-agent contract handed out by Fisher remains Joakim Soria's two-year, $15 million pact inked in 2019. (The largest contract in Oakland A's history is Eric Chavez's $66 million extension he signed back in 2004, or one year before Fisher joined the ownership group.) Fisher was the lone owner who chose not to pay his minor leaguers during the lost season of 2020, and he relented only after a vigorous public outcry. The A's under Fisher reportedly missed a stadium rent payment in 2020 despite almost certainly turning a very healthy profit in 2019. One could go on if the point needed reinforcing.
Unfortunately, no matter how valid the criticism of Fisher is, it appears that he's on the verge of getting what he wants.
