Elephant Rumblings: “Bad Contracts”, The Last Oakland Jerseys, and Coliseum deal problems

MLB news roundup

Welcome to Thursday A’s fans!

Our very own Nico wrote a fun piece yesterday examining the chances that the Athletics could use their wallet to acquire some talent in an unconventional way: avoiding free agency and acquiring players with seemingly bad contracts. It doesn’t sound good when you first hear it but teams have “bought low” on players just to see them bounce back with their new club, making their contract not look like such an albatross on the payroll. It’s worth thinking about as the club does seemingly for the first time in a long time have some decent payroll room to play with. We invite you to join the discussion!

We continued our Season In Review series yesterday by taking one last look at super utility infielder Aledmys Diaz and his final few games with the club. An injury in spring did Diaz no favors and by the time he did return, he just didn’t look the same, the team had other options and it was already a sunk cost at that point. You can officially chalk that $14.5MM investment as a waste. Today we continue the series by getting back to the pitching side of things, but you’ll have to tune back in later to see just who it is.

We all know that the club has officially departed Oakland, taking down signage at the Coliseum and removing any mention of Oakland in their social media handles. All we East Bay natives have left are the memories of the Oakland Athletics. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been some final baseball games with ‘Oakland’ written across the jerseys. See, the Arizona Fall League didn’t print out new jerseys for the prospects playing for the Mesa Solar Sox, so they’ve been playing in the final baseball jerseys that’ll have our city’s name on the front. Check out the piece to see which six players got the final honor.

And finally to wrap up, we got word yesterday that Alameda County is delaying the approval of the Oakland Coliseum sale to the African American Sports and Entertainment Group (AASEG). The Board of Supervisors for the county aren’t exactly happy with the AASEG right now after they missed a $10MM paycheck last week. The fact of the matter is that this is a super complicated deal with a lot of different parties with different goals. And a lot of this is contingent on a lot of things going right. At the moment things are not going smoothly at all. There will be one final vote this year and it’s scheduled for December at the moment. It’s a complicated subject but definitely worthy of your time if you live in the East Bay.

A’s Coverage

• Using “Bad Contracts” To Build A Competitive Team
• 2024 Athletics Season In Review: Aledmys Diaz
• The Last Six Players to Wear Oakland A’s Jerseys
• MLB’s Athletics, Rays face significant stadium concerns
• Alameda County Board of Supervisors delay approval of Oakland Coliseum sale

MLB News & Interest:

• Yankees, Dodgers to headline Opening Day doubleheader
• Rockies Reportedly Willing To Trade Brendan Rodgers, Justin Lawrence
• Wander Franco assigned court check-ins amid weapons charge
• The scouting report on Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki
• Rich Hill Open To Pitching In 2025
• Medical Examiner: Dodgers star Fernando Valenzuela died of septic shock
• Tampa Bay Rays’ stadium won’t be ready until 2026
• Today in Baseball History

Best of X:

AFL update from yesterday:

Former center fielder Ramon Laureano has been playing in the D.R.:

A recap of some recent moves:

ICYMI: