Los Angeles Dodgers Making A's Decision to Relocate Look Even Worse
The discourse among baseball fans and media members the past couple of weeks has been revolving around whether the Los Angeles Dodgers are ruining the game by snatching up Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, and most recently Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The short answer is no, they're not. Each team has the same chance to spend money that the Dodgers do, and they choose not to do it. People will say that the Dodgers have more resources, but they have also spent a long time building up the infrastructure around the franchise from coaching and the front office to taking care of their players at every level. Some owners are just unwilling to do that and will serve their minor leaguers food from Fyre Fest.
One of those types of owners is John Fisher.
L.A.'s big acquisitions could be hurting Fisher's chances of success in Las Vegas. As we've talked about before, it was already going to be difficult for the A's to convert the Dodger fanbase that is prevalent in Las Vegas due to how the teams operate. This specific winter has made Fisher's task that much more difficult.
How many top tier players would he have to sign to his club to attract some eyeballs--in his own adopted city--away from the glitz and glamor of Los Angeles? They have three of baseball's best hitters, potentially one of the game's best pitchers in Yamamoto, and they have the money and the farm system to add basically any other pieces they want to in order to make a run at multiple championships.
The A's have lost 100+ games the last two seasons. It would take some big-time spending to get people to consider switching allegiances. The A's franchise record for a contract is still the six years and $66 million that third baseman Eric Chavez earned---before Fisher bought the team. The largest contract that the A's owner has handed out and paid in full (without trading them or their contract) is the three years and $30 million handed to Billy Butler ahead of the 2015 season.
There's also the fact that the high speed rail project between Las Vegas and Los Angeles was just granted $3 billion and is projected to open in 2028. The A's ballpark in Las Vegas is also supposed to open that year. If nothing changes with MLB's schedule, the Dodgers would be set to play three games in Las Vegas that season against the A's, so those contests would likely result in packed houses.
The Dodgers will also be playing 81 home games just a two hour train ride away, taking Dodger fans away from the market that the A's would be hoping to capture. For a savvy businessman, this is something that you would look at and think to yourself "is this the best spot for my investment to go?" Instead, we got a news leak that Fisher plans to open up an art gallery at the new ballpark earlier this week.
The Dodgers are over here staking a claim to the Vegas market with their active off-season and the star power they're adding to the roster. Heck, by then they may have rattled off a couple of World Series wins. The A's meanwhile don't even know where they'll be playing baseball games from 2025-27 with there being a non-zero possibility it'll be in a minor league facility. The team that is thinking long-term here isn't the one that's attempting to uproot an entire franchise from the city it has called home for 55 years.
The Dodgers aren't the problem with baseball, but they're going to be a huge problem for John Fisher if he decides to follow through with this Las Vegas idea.