Former Marlins President believes owners are annoyed with A's dawdling relocation to Las Vegas
Former Miami Marlins president David Samson joined the Foul Territory YouTube show on Monday and like he does on his own show, Nothing Personal, spoke a bit about the A's situation.
He first brought them up when talking about how MLB is much better at keeping their "internal stuff internal" when it comes to the owners having some strong opinions about how other teams operate. "The A's are the latest example. Of course the owners are annoyed that the A's don't have their deal done, because the owners want to expand. Because they need that expansion revenue to help off-set the losses from Covid, and to just give them an extra pot of money."
If you're wondering why the A's were all of a sudden working on hard timelines in a post-Covid world after spending 15 years meandering all around the Bay Area, this would be a pretty good indicator as to why that sudden change occurred. It's also worth noting that Rob Manfred told The Athletic that expansion is now also being held up by the RSN deals that are in jeopardy in a number of markets. He told Evan Drellich that he would like to see the league on better financial footing there before taking on two new teams.
Samson continued, "The Vegas deal is by no way a sure thing...I still don't think that the A's are gonna get a deal done in Vegas. The fact that the owners approved the relocation, it means as much as the four of us voting to approve the A's relocation. It's not relevant. It was done as a procedural matter. When they voted to approve it, they had no real information in front of them because there is no real information available to them."
As we've said for the past three months, the owner's vote was just a procedural move to keep the A's in their contract with Bally's and GLPI at the Tropicana site. The team needed to have MLB approval to relocate by early December, and all the vote did was knock down that barrier to let John Fisher keep trying to figure things out. Other than announcing that the proposed ballpark would have an art exhibit, that's the only real news that's come out on the A's move to Vegas since the end of the 2023 season.
They aren't making progress. That's why the owners are frustrated.
Samson's final statement on the A's and Las Vegas is something we've been seeing a lot more of lately, too. "Mark my words. Something has to happen. Because we're getting up to a point where not only do the A's not know where they're going to play in '25, '26, '27, but the dream of them being in a new stadium in Vegas in '28 is tenuous at best, and they've got to be in a new stadium somewhere in '28. You generally need three years, start to finish, [for a] retractable roof. 35-month schedule, but that means that you have to start the construction drawings. You have to get all of your financing documents done.
"So they can start construction as late as March or April of '25, but there's a lot of work that has to happen before you put a shovel in the ground, literally."
David Samson is a great source of information because he is someone that has worked with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, he knows the owners, and he helped get a ballpark built in Miami. His knowledge and feel for this topic has been fairly spot-on throughout the relocation process, and he has said all along that he doesn't think the A's move to Las Vegas.
At the very least, he appears to be right about one thing: Something needs to happen with the A's move quickly, because they're working against the timeline of MLB's schedule release, getting shovels in the ground early next year, and also the closing of the Tropicana hotel. Bally's was going to close up shop there anyway, and they're not going to wait around for the A's to figure things out while they lose money on an empty lot.
Time is ticking.