Will The Athletics Be A Different Team Due To Playing In West Sacramento

Posted: 2025-03-19 08:40:38 (ET)    [ 167 views ]

by Clifton Neeley

The Athletics will become a Sacramento based team this season while their Las Vegas stadium is being built.  The altitude is basically the same as Oakland, so it will create no difference for either the Athletics or for visiting teams.

The teams that typically struggle on the road, will struggle in Sacramento just like they always do.  In fact, that is precisely why baseball will never be as popular as football is today.  Season in and season out, baseball is too much the same as always.  A new Las Vegas team will inject some new differences, but not the good kind (see article at the bottom of this one dated 8-10-2023).

Baseball is the same as always because they (the league officials and owners) are happy, happy, happy to earn big money and scared ghostly pale to allow real talent to become center stage. They would rather sell beer and "a fan experience" as an entertainment venue, than to actually become a competitive league. 

When one stops for a moment and thinks about it, why would a team like the Colorado Rockies continue to be a bottom dweller when they consistently draft in the top ten, due to their poor record on the road?  Top ten Pitchers, top ten hitters, top ten defensive players.  Can they not draft well because they can't read stat sheets?  No! That is not the problem.

The Rockies are a prime example of an organization that has no competitive integrity.  They know what is wrong.  They know how to fix it.  They would rather waste their drafted talent and fake the hope that the draft and trades will keep their fan base happy.  The new and young players still have faith in themselves and don't know what they are really signing up for. Previous players like Larry Walker, Todd Helton, and Charlie Blackmon know that they see too little movement on the pitches while playing in Denver to make a smooth transition to playing on the road where curves and hops are more defined.  The fastball final movement is just too significant, so it takes 3 to 4 games to adjust and by then, the confidence of the hitters is gone. 

Any team based in Las Vegas or Denver in a league dominated by sea level based teams and midwest teams will have the same problem--unless they build the batting cage I have told them about.  An absolute fact is this: Any team from anywhere in the world (except South Africa--also at over 5,000 feet) could trade places with the Colorado Rockies, players, coaches, owners, stadiums, beer stands, management, and minor league officials and teams, and the result would remain the same.  The team that is newly based in Colorado would duplicate the MLB record that the Rockies have attained--and it would last for 30 more years "the same."  And, the current Colorado Rockies organization would take on a similar Win-Loss record to the teams' historical record with which they traded places. 

Competitive Integrity is the real issue.  Football has it, and they do not have much of an atmospheric hindrance within the game; its man-against-man.  Basketball and Soccer have it with only a little more atmospheric hindrance.  Hockey has competitive integrity and no known atmospheric interference.  Baseball has an issue caused by atmospheric hindrance that has been explained and proven, but the league and the Rockies hide it like a bunch of scared bunny rabbits.  They have even faked the algorithms showing pitch movement differentials. They just can't fake the scores and hits.  They can only hide things like the differences.

If the pressurized batting cage would be put in play for the Rockies and the Las Vegas Athletics, those teams would be able to transition to sea level and compete equally with the home team and the game would become talent on talent. 

In the meantime, MLB and the Rockies are doing harm to the careers of the talented players they sign and the talented coaches and managers they employ.

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