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As the process of relocating the A’s to Las Vegas continues, the team does not yet know where it will play once its lease to play at the Oakland Coliseum expires after the 2024 MLB season.
While the A’s are reportedly exploring several sites for their temporary home between 2025 and 2027, with their new stadium along The Strip anticipated for 2028, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association , Tony Clark, is getting tired of uncertainty.
“It needs to be done,” Clark told John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle. “Players need to understand and appreciate both the short and long term as they make decisions about their careers and what tomorrow will look like in that regard.
“You would think there would be more control over the decisions that are made here. But, unfortunately, it has continued as far as doubt remains. I’m still hoping that sooner rather than later something a little more concrete will come to fruition so we can have some conversations at that point with the league instead of wondering what’s going to be next year or the next two years or maybe even the next ones. next three years. It’s going to seem.”
While Sutter Health Park in Sacramento was originally reported to be the favorite in the A’s search for a temporary home, with a park in Utah also under consideration, the team is focused on playing in Oakland at the Coliseum until its new stadium is ready. be ready. in four years, Mick Akers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Friday, citing a person with knowledge of the situation.
All the unknowns, from the actual move to Las Vegas to where the A’s will play in the middle, certainly hampered the team in MLB free agency this offseason, as Clark hinted.
“We have one more year left to play in our current stadium,” A’s general manager David Forst said at the MLB Winter Meetings in December. “Then three more years of uncertainty. And all of that affects what we can and will do on the field.
“Specifically, when I talk to a free agent about a two-year contract, the question arises about where we will play in the second year of the contract, and we don’t have an answer for that yet. We think that in all the conversations we have.”
In speaking with Shea, Clark said the issue is also of great concern to players already on the team — a situation he noted would make it “nearly impossible” to create a 2025 schedule if the union doesn’t know where the A’s are. playing.
“Maybe it’s not surprising that the players had questions,” Clark told Shea after union representatives met with A’s players at spring training. “We know management here is having some conversations with the players, so it’s just an ongoing dialogue that they would like to see come to a greater level of clarity than we have right now.”
For players, fans and the rest of the league, it could be some time before that clarity comes.