Negative chants about the home team are expected at Oakland Coliseum.
The Athletics are the worst team in the major leagues and one of the worst MLB clubs in recent history. But their play isn’t necessarily what’s animating Oakland fans. Instead, it’s the team’s ownership.
Sound familiar?
The “sell the team” chants heard at Oakland Coliseum this weekend — a result of Athletics ownership systematically driving the fan base away to justify moving the team to Las Vegas — might have felt a bit familiar for the Orioles fans at the run-down ballpark. Earlier this month, it was Orioles fans who directed “Free Kevin Brown” chants at ownership as a message to bring back the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network broadcaster after he was benched for stating facts about the club’s past struggles.
The similarities between the Athletics, who are testing the limits of modern-day futility, and the Orioles, who are attempting to push the limits of how quickly a rebuild can produce a championship, don’t stop at the chants.
Regardless of the vast difference in on-field performance — evidenced by Baltimore’s sweep of Oakland this weekend — the series represented a matchup between the sport’s two cheapest teams in terms of payroll. The clubs also have rich histories as two of MLB’s best in the 1970s. And while the Athletics’ expected move to Las Vegas is real and Orioles fans’ fears of chairman and CEO John Angelos moving the club somewhere else are based more on past trauma than in fact, the team remains without a long-term lease to play at Camden Yards past this season.
Despite those similarities, the Orioles are heading in the right direction as the AL’s best team, while the Athletics are heading to Vegas. The Orioles took care of business this weekend against the Athletics — the latest of many signs this year that Baltimore is in a post-rebuild world.
“I remember being in their situation a couple years ago,” Orioles first baseman Ryan Mountcastle said. “To see how far we’ve come, it’s a lot more fun to be on this side of it than that side of it.”
Manager Brandon Hyde and his players were quick to qualify their answers this weekend with kind words about the Athletics and how they’re still a big league team capable of beating the Orioles. That is, of course, true, but Oakland’s ownership group — led by John Fisher — and front office are making it barely so. A team full of entirely replacement players would be expected to win about 50 games in a 162-game season. The Athletics are on pace to go 44-118.
There might not be a manager in the majors more understanding of what the A’s are going through than Hyde. The fifth-year Orioles skipper lost 108 games in his first season in 2019 and 110 in 2021 as the rebuilding club also didn’t put a competitive product on the field.
“They’re giving a ton of young guys experience right now,” said Hyde, whose first three years as manager were likely filled with similar platitudes from opposing skippers.
While the Orioles are no longer rebuilding, their payroll looks like they are. At $60.8 million entering the season, the only big league club lower was Oakland’s $56.8 million, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts. A low payroll for the Athletics is nothing new. With a stingy ownership group predating “Moneyball,” they’ve frequently had some of the lowest payrolls in the sport.
Orioles reliever Danny Coulombe pitched for Oakland from 2015 to 2018, witnessing the team go from a 94-loss rebuilding season to the first of three playoff berths in his final one.
“The decline was pretty rapid,” Coulombe said. “Even five years ago when I was here, like Saturday night’s crowd would’ve been a Monday night crowd and then on the weekends would really pack out. Honestly, Oakland has really good fans, really diehard fans. It’s hard to see. You can tell they haven’t done anything with the Coliseum.”
Baltimore is also a smaller market, but puny payrolls haven’t always been the case for the Orioles, whose salaries ranked in the middle of the pack the last time they were playoff contenders. But Angelos, whose dragged-out lease negotiations have worried some fans who are still scarred from the Colts leaving in 1984, has suggested other low-payroll organizations as the Orioles’ blueprint. While their rebuild mirrors the Houston Astros, the organization Angelos plucked Mike Elias and others from to lead the front office in November 2018, Angelos this offseason named the Tampa Bay Rays, Cleveland Guardians and Milwaukee Brewers, ranked 28th, 25th and 20th in payroll, respectively, as sustainable models for Baltimore.
Payrolls, of course, aren’t everything. The Orioles are proving that this season, as have the Rays for the past 15. For most low-payroll teams, though, the bill eventually comes due, usually leading to a painful rebuild that oftentimes doesn’t end up as fruitful as what Elias and company have shepherded in Baltimore.
The season before Coulombe joined the Athletics, just over 2 million fans flocked to the Coliseum — the general benchmark for a successful attendance season. They failed to top 800,000 last year and are on pace for around the same this season. Their two highest-attended games this year are a result of reverse boycotts, a movement from Athletics fans to pack the park to show the baseball world that it’s the ownership group, not the fan base, that is the problem in Oakland.
Hyde grew up in the Bay Area and was a San Francisco Giants fan, but he remembers going to games at the Coliseum as a kid and seeing it packed.
“I know they’ve had their struggles here for a while, and hope for whatever’s best. But the Bay Area’s always been a great sports area,” he said.
There is perhaps nothing more true in sports than fans showing up when their local nine are competitive. It’s the case in nearly every big league city, including in Baltimore this year. As the Orioles have surged to the top of the AL standings, fans have begun supporting the team in kind with an attendance jump of 31.4%.
It might be easy to see a team as bad as the 2023 A’s and think, in hindsight, it was inevitable. But just a few years ago, Oakland had a core of exciting young players, and ownership’s refusal to increase payroll to pay those players — notably third baseman Matt Chapman and first baseman Matt Olson — is the main reason the Athletics are historically bad.
“There were some chances there to add some players and really make a run at it,” Coulombe said. “We had a lot of pieces. Instead of subtracting, if they could have added they would’ve made a run.”
In a few years, the Orioles and Angelos could be at a similar crossroads as stars like Cedric Mullins, Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson and others approach free agency. Whether or not he’s willing to pay them remains a question.
The Athletics are a cautionary tale that small-market teams are just an inconsiderate owner and a few bad front office decisions away from ignominy.
What’s to come?
A welcome day off Monday after a nine-game West Coast trip in which the Orioles went 6-3. The opponent Baltimore will face at Camden Yards for a three-game series beginning Tuesday is much better than Oakland, but the Orioles have had similar success against the Toronto Blue Jays. With an 8-2 record against Toronto, the Orioles look to extend their 8 1/2-game lead over the Blue Jays this week before hosting the Colorado Rockies for a weekend series.
What was good?
The offense in Oakland. Baltimore’s bats powered its eighth sweep of the season, tallying 42 hits and 28 runs in the three games. Rutschman went 5-for-11 with four walks. Henderson, behind his near-cycle Sunday, went 8-for-14 with five extra-base hits and five RBIs. Ryan Mountcastle remained one of the hottest hitters in the majors with a 5-for-13 weekend. Austin Hays was 4-for-12 with two doubles, a homer and four RBIs.
What wasn’t?
It’s hard not to trust Shintaro Fujinami given his electric stuff, but it’s hard to trust him given his inconsistency. It was once again on display last week. The flamethrowing right-hander pitched four times and, naturally, two went well and two didn’t. He pitched scoreless innings in a blowout loss to the San Diego Padres on Tuesday and a lopsided victory Sunday. In between, he allowed three runs on three hits combined in two outings. Fujinami has a 5.79 ERA in 14 innings since the Orioles acquired him from the Athletics.
On the farm
After the Orioles optioned outfield Colton Cowser to Triple-A to begin the week, Hyde said he wanted the prospect to “reset a little bit, relax and breathe” during his time in the minors. Cowser did just that. In five games with the Tides, Cowser went 7-for-20 with three doubles, two homers, five RBIs and five walks. The 23-year-old hit .115 with a .443 OPS in 77 plate appearances with the Orioles. He’s slashing .332/.461/.561 — good for a 1.022 OPS — in Triple-A.
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