How Worried Should A's be About Ballpark in Sacramento After Cubs Series?

The Athletics finished up their first homestand in their temporary home in Sacramento, and it did not go well. The team was outscored 35-9 by the visiting Chicago Cubs, and wasn't terribly competitive in the three-game set, outside of a couple of innings in game two on Tuesday.

Before the season began, Athletics on SI wrote about one big change that could have a detrimental impact on the A's in 2025, with that change being the batter's eye.

The reasoning basically being that moving from a pitcher's park at the Oakland Coliseum to a more hitter-friendly environment was always going to take a bit of an adjustment period. The A's front office said repeatedly during the offseason that Sutter Health Park is more of a pitcher's park in the Pacific Coast League, so they expected it to play league average with big-league hitters.

Maybe they didn't account for Seiya Suzuki and Kyle Tucker, who combined to go 13-for-28 with four doubles and five home runs. There were a combined 12 total home runs hit by both teams, with the A's accounting for just four of those.

The other adjustment that may not have been accounted for is the impact that the new batter's eye would have. Players we spoke to in 2024 mentioned that the previous one was pretty hard to hit with, especially early in the game. Now, with three extra innings of offense to work with, this shouldn't figure to be quite such a pitcher's park, even for the San Francisco Giants minor-league affiliate.

The data that was available that made this seem like a pitcher's park included the old batter's eye, and the lower run environment.

So that's the backdrop we're working with. There could legitimately be an issue afoot here for the A's long-term, given how bad their pitching staff looked in the three games at home, including big offseason additions Luis Severino and Jeffrey Springs.

There are a couple of reasons that this may not be the end of the world, too.

The first is that the Cubs are a pretty good team, and after getting swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers in Japan, and having a tough luck split against a really good Arizona Diamondbacks team, they seemed primed to break out. Sometimes it's not who you play, but when you play them.

There's also the fact that A's pitchers just weren't locating the way they needed to, as evidenced by the 20 walks that Athletics pitchers issued. Ten of those came in Monday's 18-3 loss, and another seven came in Wednesday's 10-2 defeat. When you're not locating, the ball tends to find the middle of the plate more often, and that's when bad things happen.

When you're issuing free passes, people tend to be on base when those bad things happen.

More evidence that this may have just been bad timing is that the A's were largely held in check in this series offensively, so it's not like anybody can just walk in and put up 35 runs. Chicago was clicking on all cylinders, and they punished the A's mistakes. All of the Cubs home runs in this series were at least 102 miles per hour off the bat, so they weren't cheap.

That said, with the win blowing out, the ball is likely to carry a bit more.

It's too early to definitively determine how the new ballpark will play. We said it could be a top-10 ballpark for offense with the batter's eye adjustment, and that still holds true. But just like in any science experiment, it's important to change some variables before reaching a conclusion.

Unfortunately, the A's next homestand will be against the currently undefeated San Diego Padres (7-0), and the dangerous New York Mets (3-3). Things may calm down after that, at least until the weather begins to warm. During the summer, this may be a completely different ballpark, and we'll have to keep an eye on how the ball flies then, too.

For now, the A's get to go to a more pitcher-friendly environment in Coors Field for a weekend series.