What if MLB Owners, Players Can't Agree? Athletics Would Be Badly Impacted

If there is no deal to put together a 2020 MLB season, the Oakland Athletics would be one of the franchises most severely impacted. The team is built for a World Series run this year. That could go away by this time next season.

There’s plenty of optimism that there will be baseball played this year, with the owners having decided on a plan to go forward with an 82-game season and expanded playoffs.

Selling the players on it, however, will be tough. Players, not owners, will have their health on the line with each game being played in the midst of a pandemic, and they’re going to have to be convinced they can play without risking their health or that of their families in the age of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

The players also have to be convinced that the owners aren’t establishing a salary cap, the same salary cap issue that shut down the second half of the 1994 season and delayed the start of the 1995 season. The view from the owners’ box is that a 50-50 split of revenues in 2020 is not a salary cap. The players’ union seems to see that split as the very definition of a salary cap.

Both issues are going to be tough slogs, and yet there seems to be a belief that the two sides will strike a deal and Major League Baseball will return some time in July.

Here’s the thing, though – what happens if no deal can be brokered, if the grim visage of 1994-95 is replayed again with the country going through a pandemic?

What if there is no baseball in 2020? It’s a fair possibility, and it’s a fair guess that few teams would be hurt worse than the Oakland A’s.

The A’s are coming off back-to-back 97-win seasons and are arguably the equal of the two-time American League West champion Astros. The A’s are built to win. Win this year. If 2020 gets away, so might that winning opportunity.

Marcus Semien, who finished third in the MVP balloting is in the final year of his contract. Has he played his final game with the A’s? Oakland management isn’t generally given to huge contracts the likes of which Semien might be in line for.

Mike Fiers is in the final year of his contract, too. The probable opening day starter is coming off a dominant 15-4 season, and it’s reasonably likely that he, like Semien could be elsewhere come 2021.

All-Star closer Liam Hendriks has been around baseball for about a decade now, and he, too, is up for free agency come the end of the 2020 season.

Beyond that, there is the very real possibility that the A’s won’t be able to push their Howard Terminal stadium project forward on time. The plan was for an opening in 2023, but there hasn’t been a shovel put in the ground, there are still legal obstacles, and there is no income coming in to help move the process along.

Getting the season going, even a half season, would generate income, much-needed income. It would only be a fraction of what a non-locked down season would be, but it would be a substantial fraction, and that money would help move the process along.

The 2023 date is significant because some of the A’s best talent will be up for free agency starting about then. Starter Sean Manaea will be there in 2023. Third baseman Matt Chapman and first baseman Matt Olson are both up for free agency in 2024.

A’s executive vice president Billy Beane has dealt with a small payroll for years, going back to the Moneyball times of two decades ago. Beane has long said he doesn’t see that changing until there’s a new stadium and new revenue. So big contracts are unlikely in the extreme.

If the new stadium comes on line, then Beane and general manager David Forst might have the leverage to keep some of their key faces. If the Howard Terminal project north of Jack London Square is delayed, even by a year, that could be enough to see the A’s stripped of some of their prime talent.

The A’s will probably lose Khris Davis after the 2021 season, but even with Davis, Semien, Hendriks and Fiers gone, the talent pool is deep enough for the club to remain reasonably competitive in 2021 and 2022.

But 2020 was the year that it could have come all together. If there is no 2020 season, Oakland’s best shot at making it back to the World Series may fizzle without even having been fired.

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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