New York Mets Series Big For A's, Sacramento

Apr 7, 2025; West Sacramento, California, USA; Athletics pitcher Luis Severino (40) throws a pitch against the San Diego Padres during the second inning at Sutter Health Park. Mandatory Credit: Ed Szczepanski-Imagn Images | Ed Szczepanski-Imagn Images

The New York Mets are coming to town beginning tonight, and this could be an early prove-it series for the A's in a couple of ways.

On the field, the Athletics haven't played their best ball just yet, though they have been receiving better pitching performances at home this week, allowing just 11 runs to the San Diego Padres in their three-game series while scoring 15 of their own. This is a huge improvement over the 35-9 thumping they took from the Chicago Cubs in their first series at Sutter Health Park.

The Mets are a good team, entering the series at 8-4 on the year and winners of seven of their last ten. New York also sits tied atop the tough NL East with the Philadelphia Phillies, while the A's are tied for last at 5-8 with the Seattle Mariners in the not-so-great AL West.

A series win at home would be huge for the A's against a tough opponent. It would also be their first home series win of the season, which would be another step in the right direction as the team adjusts to life in West Sacramento.

Now, we don't know exactly who will be starting for the A's just yet, outside of Friday when JP Sears will get the ball. The Athletics optioned number five starter Joey Estes to Triple-A Las Vegas at the start of the week after back-to-back rough outings, and called up veteran Jason Alexander to serve as he team's long man out of the bullpen.

With the improvements on the mound, he wasn't needed against the San Diego Padres.

As we discussed earlier this week, the A's could go with either Luis Severino and Jeffrey Springs, skipping the fifth spot in the rotation with the off-day yesterday, or they could go another direction.

One direction would be Mitch Spence, a former New York Yankees prospect that was in competition with Estes for that final spot in the rotation. He is serving as manager Mark Kotsay's "joker" out of the bullpen, where he can serve in long relief or in late innings.

The other option would be to go with former Mets prospect J.T. Ginn, who holds a 1.64 ERA (0.62 FIP) in two Triple-A starts this season, while also striking out a ridiculous 51.4% of the batters he's faced. Ginn was acquired by the A's in the Chris Bassitt trade a few years back and made his MLB debut towards the end of the 2024 campaign.

We've also noticed that Ginn has not stayed on turn with the Aviators, which means that he has been kept available as an option for this start on Saturday. It's likely he'll be on the roster this weekend in some capacity.

The Mets are scheduled to send out Griffin Canning, David Peterson, and Kodai Senga. Former A's Frankie Montas, Sean Manaea, and Paul Blackburn are all on the IL at this time.

The other reason that this is a big series isn't necessarily for an on-field reason, but rather who's in the stands.

For the home opener, the A's announced a sellout crowd of 12,119. An actual capacity crowd is set at 13,416, but it was reported that the A's comped 1,300 tickets for the game for "player's families, team executives, etc."

Across the six games that have been played at Sutter Health Park, they have drawn a total of 60,629 fans, for an average of 10,104 in a ballpark that can fit closer to 14,000. Both of those series were also played from Monday to Wednesday, so that could have been a factor. The weather has also been a little on the cooler side.

So with a team from the biggest market, New York, coming to town on a weekend, this series should fully be expected to sell out. Whether that's from fans traveling from New York to Sacramento, or local fans showing up for this one, this series should be at capacity.

If it's not, and the numbers continue to hover around 10,000 fans per game, then this three to four year agreement for the club in Sacramento is off to a pretty bad start, and it's hard to see it getting much better.

Of course, if the series is packed, then the next question will be whether it was the opponent or the weekend that helped up the numbers, which would mean waiting for another couple of weeks to have a better idea of what the answer is.

The last time the Mets traveled to California to face the A's, it was at the Oakland Coliseum in 2023, in the first series since the team announced their intentions to leave for Las Vegas. They still ended up drawing 13,904 on average for that series.

This is going to be a big weekend for the A's both on the field and in the stands.