The Oakland Athletics have finalized a plan to move to Sacramento from 2025 to 2027, marking its transition away from the Bay Area and toward Las Vegas.
The team is expected to move to Las Vegas in 2028, when their new stadium along the Strip is expected to open.
In the meantime, the A's will share a facility with the San Francisco Giants' Triple-A team — the Sacramento River Cats — in the state's capital. Sutter Health Park in Sacramento holds a maximum of roughly 14,000 people. For reference, the Athletics have been averaging just under 7,000 fans per game this season despite a series a team with robust away fandom — the Red Sox — and a capacity of about 47,000 people.
My colleague and MLB data expert Sean Zerillo predicts that park factors at Sutter Health Park could result in — on average — fewer runs at the new ballpark. While the Pacific Coast League is known for its offense, the stadium in Sacramento is considered the league' preeminent pitcher's park. Adjusting for the inflated offensive numbers in the PCL, Sutter Health Park figures to be a middle-of-the-road park for both hitters and pitchers at the MLB level.
It's a culmination of a tumultuous time in franchise history, one mired in poor ownership and extremely tight spending, leaving the A's with one of the worst facilities in American sports and perennially one of the lowest payrolls in baseball.
Despite these profound limitations, the A's had stretches of major success since the turn of the millenium, reaching the playoffs 11 times since 2000, along with an ALCS visit in 2006.
Of course, the A's in Oakland were subjects of Michael Lewis' 2003 book Moneyball, which was turned into a blockbuster movie in 2011 and altering public discourse about how to glean undervalued assets.
The A's had their most successful run in Oakland in the 1970s, when they won three World Series with the likes of Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter. In the 1980s, the team were also perennial contenders, winning the World Series in 1989 in the Bay Bridge Series, which was famous for having been delayed for a week due to the Loma Prieta earthquake, which devastated Northern California mere minutes before the scheduled start of Game 3.
Prior to the team's stint in the East Bay, the A's called Kansas City home from 1955 to 1967. The team had been founded in Philadelphia as the American League's representative in the city from 1901 to 1954.
