This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
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Sacramento Athletics
I’ve tried to keep the focus on the field for a while, as the A’s do have interesting players in Brent Rooker, Shea Langeliers, Lawrence Butler, and other bat-forward types. The A’s offense has a 108 wRC+, seventh in MLB. Mason Miller, in and around occasional blowups, is a weapon. Figuring out how Sutter Health Park will play has been a regular topic on the Gaming list.
Almost halfway through the season, though, it’s time to be realistic about what’s happening here. After an early burst of interest, reported attendance has plummeted, with fewer than 10,000 tickets sold to every game on the team’s last homestand. As the losses pile up and the mercury goes up, it’s going to be hard to convince the locals to sit outside and watch bad baseball. Players are starting to kvell about playing in a minor-league park, from visiting pitchers hating the condition of the mound to A’s pitchers fed up with the distance between the dugout and clubhouse. We’re barely two months into this three-season experiment, and I can’t imagine players will become more enamored of the conditions as the temperatures crack 100 more regularly, and a field serving two home teams (the Giants’ Triple-A squad plays there, too) shows more wear and tear.
With each passing day, the likelihood of this being more than a three-year stay grows. Neil deMause reported that the A’s will pretend to start construction of Vaporware Park West (the one in St. Petersburg is its twin) by moving some dirt around next week. John Fisher still doesn’t have the money in hand to build it, and the problems of a site barely big enough for a ballpark and surely too small for one with a retractable roof still exist. Rob Manfred -- whose desire to get to expansion sits at the core of this mess -- never stopped to consider that the A’s might be in a slapdash halfway house for a long time to come. This entire situation has plenty of room to get worse before it gets better.
