We’re less than two weeks into the MLB season and just like everyone predicted, the Oakland Athletics are tied for first place in their division…wait, what? Yes, it’s early, but the A’s should be the basement dwellers of the AL West. They spent a whopping $0 in free agency, trading two of their best positional players and one of their best starting pitchers this offseason. They did all of this just a year after the team finished 86-76, just five games away from the playoffs and two years from three straight playoff appearances.
They were a good team with a lot of potential and although they took a step back last season there were still enough pieces to keep the A’s in contention at least into 2022. That wasn’t GM David Frost’s plan, however. His plan was to blow everything up and get prospects, as is always the plan. Athletics seems to be in this constant state of rebuilding and A’s fans seem to have had enough. During last night’s game, which was less than two weeks from opening day, and THE SECOND GAME OF THEIR FIRST HOME SERIES OF 2022, 3,748 spectators were in attendance.
The A’s’ home stadium, RingCentral Coliseum, seats 63,132 (drops to 35,000 when the upper deck is covered), so attendance at the team’s second home game of the season was at best 10.7 percent. It’s not good, and to be honest it feels like it’s all part of team president Dave Kaval’s plan.
Yes, I’m putting my aluminum hat on here. Is it really any wonder that less than a year after Kaval threatened the city of Oakland with moving to Las Vegas and asked the city to start planning a waterfront ballpark if they wanted to keep the A’s in the city, that Team started selling their best players and refused to spend money on players who would bring fans to the stadium? That doesn’t look suspicious at all. If anything, the lack of attendance is all the more reason for Kaval to move the team from Oakland. “The fans clearly don’t want us here,” Kaval will say. “If they did, they would show up to our games.” His mustache-twirling schemes seem to work perfectly.
The sad truth is that Kaval is right. If my favorite team started leaving, sold all of their best players while still in the playoff hunt, and at the same time spent absolutely no money on free agents, I wouldn’t want to go to games either. The A’s have repeatedly slapped their fans in the face with their unwillingness to give a fuck. Regardless of the situation, they seem intent on wallowing in perpetual mediocrity. They build all these great homegrown prospects just to send them to the AL East once the A’s get good enough to compete with them.
Obviously the A’s can’t afford to keep these great players until contract time, but the front office isn’t even trying. They just gave in to the idea that their fans will forever be dissatisfied with the team because they can’t afford to keep their big names. They’ve succumbed to the idea that they’ll never get a known free agent. They’re broken and the fans are fed up. The city of Oakland deserves better than a team that claims to have “roots in Oakland” but wants nothing more than to leave town with two middle fingers and a cloud of dust.
