Rob Manfred No Longer Optimistic A's Stay in Oakland
The A's ballpark situation has been a source of frustration for fans for decades now, and one way or another there will be an answer to "where are the A's going to play?" within the next year or so.
The A's and the Oakland City Council have been working towards a deal and legitimately making progress towards a binding vote, but there is some worry that since the deadline to get a final vote on the Howard Terminal project before the end of the year has passed, that a new City Council and a new Mayor could delay the timeframe enough to get the A's to leave the table entirely and start putting more effort towards a ballpark in Vegas.
That is the groundwork for the comments that Rob Manfred had on the A's situation in Oakland.
That all said, the Commissioner has been known to try and turn up the heat on the Oakland City Council from time to time, and appears to be another one of his attempts to get some movement while the two sides are deadlocked in negotiations.
Casey Pratt of ABC 7 noted on his YouTube page that there hasn't been any news on the negotiations from either the A's or the City, and that is usually a good thing, because it means that there are no leaks, which means that both sides are happy with how negotiations are going.
I tweeted out from the Locked on A's Twitter account that this felt like Manfred trying to turn up the pressure on the City of Oakland, and Casey Pratt seems to have confirmed as much, with the added wrinkle that he's trying to get Las Vegas to step up to the plate.
The concerns regarding the Howard Terminal Project are legitimate concerns, but this is an odd timing for the Commissioner to come out and try get something going, because the Oakland City Council is about a week away from Election Day. The people voting on Howard Terminal today may not be the same members voting come January, and they wouldn't be the ones seeing the project through.
I have said it before on the podcast, but I don't think that Las Vegas is a good fit for the A's because they already have over 100 years of team history, and you have to believe that a large swath of the residents in Vegas already have a rooting interest baseball-wise, so they aren't just going to drop their current fandom because this other team moved in.
The more likely scenario for success for baseball in Vegas would be an expansion team that could build their own history, and their own memories, with the residents of Las Vegas.
The Raiders were able to move and have some success, but football is a more popular sport, and they only play eight home games a year. It's easier to fill a stadium with fewer games and more fans willing to trek out for a weekend. Baseball is an everyday sport, and I just don't see attendance from tourists being that high for a Vegas A's game on a Tuesday night when there are so many other options the city has to offer. There has to be that sense of ownership from the local fans for a baseball team to thrive in Vegas, and I don't know that there would be one with the A's.
The A's are currently on their third stop, and Vegas would make four. You're telling me that a baseball fan in Vegas is going to drop the team they've rooted for all their life to root for the team that just moved in and may leave when it's convenient? Doesn't seem likely when they can just stream all of their team's games from afar for less money than it would take to go to one baseball game.
It should also be noted that Bob Nightengale has a long history of being wrong. From free agents going to the wrong team, or teams "being out" on certain guys at the Trade Deadline, to the A's being optimistic that Kyler Murray would report to spring training (after he'd said he was going to the NFL), there have been so many instances that it's a running joke on social media.
If you're a fan of the A's, there are going to be days of good news and seemingly bad news when it comes to keeping the A's in Oakland. Progress isn't a straight line. Regardless of the outcome, it's not over until there is an agreement with either the City of Oakland or with Las Vegas, so until that day, we'll be stuck in limbo.