Rates & Barrels - Saying Goodbye to the Oakland A's

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Eno and DVR are joined by Melissa Lockard on the heels of Thursday's final game for the Oakland A's at the Coliseum. They discuss Melissa's path into A's fanhood a few decades ago, the final home game in Oakland, where things stand with the A's player development, and the long-term outlook for Brent Rooker and Lawrence Butler. Rundown 1:11 Melissa's Path to Becoming an A's Fan 6:07 A Bunny Bringing Balls Out of the Ground? 13:19 How Did This Actually Happens? 20:53 The Final Home Game in Oakland 25:34 What's Next for A's Fans? 33:57 Where Do Things Stand for Player Development? 39:12 How Far Is This Team From Contention? 49:22 Brent Rooker's Incredible 2024 Campaign 53:44 Lawrence Butler's Future 59:22 Which Pitching Prospects is Melissa Most Excited About for 2025? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Melissa on Twitter: @MelissaLockard e-mail: [e-mail] \Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris With: Melissa Lockard Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your teen requested a ride, but this time not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. Welcome to Rays and Barrels, it's Friday, September 27th. Director and writer Eno Saris and Melissa Lockard here with you today. On this episode we discuss the A's final chapter in Oakland. The last game at the Oca Coliseum was played on Thursday.

Both Melissa and Eno were on hand for that so we'll talk about some of the happenings then and look at some of the bigger picture questions around the franchise as a result of their departure from Oakland. So a lot to cover today and we'll get to some fantasy stuff a little bit later on in the show but Melissa thanks for joining us. I'm sure today is an extremely sad day for you as someone who has been an A's fan for a long time. And we've talked throughout the last year plus now

about just the overwhelming sense of community that gets taken away when a franchise leaves town, right? And I just wanted to start by sort of backing up and just asking you, how does one become an A's fan, right? And I just wanted to start by sort of backing up and just asking you, how does one become an A's fan, right? A lot of markets don't have two teams. If you become a fan of baseball, or you don't have a choice of two local teams usually. So what drew you to the A's when you became a baseball fan?

It's funny, I think partially it's location. I grew up about 20 minutes from the Coliseum and getting to Candlestick Park, though we did do that for 49er games as a family. It was a lot harder to do on like a weekday school night or or something like that. So, you know proximity helped a little bit, but I always liked the atmosphere there. There was just a lot of energy and kind of uniqueness to it. The colors were cool. They had white cleats.

When nobody else wore white cleats, there were signs and music. And there was just a lot for a little kid to love really quickly. And then it didn't help. I mean, it definitely helped that like all of a sudden they were the best team in baseball, for four straight years when I was really getting

into all of it. But it just was always a really great place to go. And is it pre-teen or teenager, before I had my driver's license, I could just hop on BART and go to a game by myself or with my brother or whatever. That makes a huge difference too when a kid can just go on their own and they don't even need their parents to go. It really kind of cements that fandom with you. Dave That's an interesting thing.

I grew up a Braves fan and when they were downtown I was able to do that. I was able to take the bus to the to the game and go on my My myself, I don't know that if we re-racked this and they were where they are now that I would have been able to take public Transportation out to where the Braves are so it's a little injecting a little city planning commentary in there. Right. So Bart was part of the reason you became an Ace fan. That's kind of cool.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's easy. Even a little kid can't get lost too much on that train. So I think baseball is kind of city planning, right? Like there's so many cities that were built in stadiums that defined neighborhoods for so many years. And so, you know, we're losing that a little bit, you know, with a lot of these stadium moves and this one, though it's not exactly a neighborhood, it certainly had that sort of city planning feel to it.

Yeah, one thing that bothers me is just the amount of car space that's required for these things. I mean, you can really feel it when you're at the Coliseum. It's in the middle of nowhere because it's surrounded by parking lots. It's just, it's, you know, there's just nothing you can do next to the stadium, you know, almost anywhere because there has to be next to the stadium has to be parking. It's so unusual for the Bay Area for there to be just empty space anywhere. Everything is so densely packed in there. like just to have concrete is very odd. But in terms of ingress and egress like that, the calcium where it is, that's probably the

thing that has best going for it. The highway's right there, the BART's right there. It's always been actually pretty easy to get in and out of. And I'll be interested to see, you know, there may not be as much of a need for parking when they redo that whole complex. You know, it was built during a time when, I think, driving was becoming more popular, and I think now as people are starting to kind of readdress that,

the fact it is a transportation hub, I think you're gonna see a kind of a unique change to what that complex looks like when they rebuild the whole thing. Yeah, I am interested in that. The other thing that you mentioned about the fandom is cool because, you know, my dad, you know, lived in San Francisco, so I went to Giants games.

And I don't know if it was the new stadium. I did more in the new stadium than Candlestick. So I'm trying to remember back to Candlestick. That was pretty wild. Candlestick was kind of wild. That had a little bit more of the Coliseum energy where people were wearing crazy shirts and had crazy signs.

And it was not well attended because it was always so frigging cold. There's so much wind, it was like it was not well attended because it was always so friggin cold like there's so much wind it was so cold so it was kind of like you and 10,000 people you know always doing crazy stuff so Candlestick was a little bit more like that but once they moved into the new park that was more kind of kind of wine drinking and and a little bit more corporate and you know had a very different feel, was way more expensive. My kids have actually ended up going to more games at the Coliseum than San Francisco because it's cheaper. When they were young and I wasn't sure how many innings I was going to get out of them,

I'm like, yeah, we're going to go to Oakland. Absolutely, yeah. I think the change from Crazy Crab as the mascot for Giants to Lucille is sort of epitomizes those two stadiums and the clouds that filled them up, so You got to tell us about crazy crab because I you guys should take the time to look crazy crab up There's no way to describe crazy crab, but it is probably the most unique mascot in the history of sports I don't know if you remember this the

Angelo's the security guard out in front of the visitors Clubhouse was telling me about a Bunny that used to come up and bring balls up out of the ground. What is this? Yeah, that was a Charlie Finley special he had Harvey the rabbit and it was a Mechanical rabbit this was before before my time But I've certainly seen a lot of videos of it. It would come up behind home plate and deliver the balls to the umpire and then it would disappear on a tunnel. And so, actually a couple of years ago when they were trying to like do their whole rooted in Oakland thing and sort of pretend like they were being nostalgic

about the past, they actually did bring back Harvey but not under the ground, but they had a rabbit that would go around the stadium and sort of entertain everybody again. But you know, I mean, that was the, you know, the Finley era I think set the tone for what the whole fan base was going to be about, right? Which was, I mean, you know, obviously the whole cheapness of it extended to almost every ownership group except the Haas family. But they were always trying new things.

If it was orange baseballs, if it was, you know these Harvey the Rabbit, if it was MC Hammer becoming a senior vice president because he was an awesome dancer outside you know where the ice plant was, or you know anything else that you could kind of think of that was unique came out of that era of the 70s and of course they won a lot of ballgames too in the beginning. That extended somehow even as ownership changed and as the like direction of where these rosters went, that uniqueness never left. I would argue that that continued into even the last 10, 20 years because they were one

of the first to do drone shows. I don't know. They claimed that they were first, but I don't care really. They were one of the first. They kind of did drone shows. A's Cast is kind of an interesting thing where they've pulled their sort of broadcast into a more internet type space where they they're kind of streaming their broadcast. Yes, it's on radio now, but there was a point which they didn't have a radio partner and the only way you could listen to them on the air on radio was to actually

go on A's cast. So like, they've done some things. I think they were the first, I think, to have the like, you can just pay to stand in the stadium, like the kind of the pass. Remember that? Yeah, that tree house. Yeah, you had to have this tree house pass where you could just pay. You didn't get a seat, but you were able to kind of walk around the stadium

You can pay and it would give you a discount on a seat if you want it So it was like you could get in 20 times a year and then it would also give you a discount on a seat if you want to sit down so Like people are doing that. I've seen this. I'm pretty sure the Brewers do it I'm seeing I think the Toronto does it like more and more teams or have this sort of pass So they I think they have been innovative and maybe it's out of competition with the Giants or whatever it has, whatever reason it's been,

but it's kind of a cool thing about this. I think it comes down to having lived here a really long time, what they failed to do and this dates back to really since Schott and Hoffman took over because there was a lack of commitment of staying in the city of Oakland, they failed to kind of protect their own territory. They sort of were like, fine, go ahead, giants,

move a dugout team store into Walnut Creek, which is right in the center of where the A's fan base should be, or go ahead and like, encourage your players to live in Lafayette and Orinda, which is in right again, where the middle of the A's fan base should be. And it just sort of created this sense of like,

the Giants were gonna take over the local marketing for everything. And they kind of like had this attitude as if, well, there's nothing we can do, but they absolutely could have done better with that. It's interesting, because the Giants were like, you cannot move to San Jose, and you almost didn't get that like retrospective, that sort of push back from the Aants were like, you cannot move to San Jose, and you almost didn't get that

retrospective, that sort of push back from the A's being like, okay, well then you can't have these things. Right. No, it was ridiculous. And Contra Costa County, for some reason, and Alameda County too, they always started denigrating them as not viable markets, but those are very innovative areas with people that have lots of money to spend as well, just as much as in the South Bay.

And they really did just sort of let the Giants creep right in there. They let the Giants take over in Sacramento as the AAA affiliate when they were the AAA affiliate there, kind of eroding whatever building fan base they had in that part of it. And again, there was always just sort of this sense of, oh, what can we do? The Giants are just going to take over the marketing. And I think a little bit of effort on that front could have made an enormous difference in terms of how you reached people in their homes when they were making a decision to go. Because I really, obviously the ballparks are aesthetically very

different. Obviously, when people were working in downtown San Francisco, being able to walk down to Oracle Park after work was a little bit of a different experience than hopping on the train and going to the Coliseum, but you know ultimately when families were making a decision to go, the Coliseum was a very good place to go if you just convinced them and nobody there was never really any effort to try to convince them to actually do that on a local level. And you know and frankly the fan groups were doing a better job of kind of guerrilla marketing to people to come to these games than the team itself at a lot of times. So, you know, I always look at that. And I think like, you know, that, you know, is that the meme of, you know, we've tried nothing and we ran a lot of ideas like that. That's been kind of their, their thing for 20 years now. And, you know, it's sort of a ridiculous thing because having grown up in this area when the Haas family was here,

there was no question that when you tried a little bit, everybody kind of, you know, glommed to that group. It's such a strange thing, especially as an outsider, to see the size of the Bay Area, the passion of the fans, to see the success of the Bay Area, the passion of the fans, to see the success they've had as a franchise. The A's moved to Oakland in 1968. They've won four World Series during their time in Oakland. Only the Yankees have won more World Series since 1968.

The Red Sox have won the same number. But you have this consistent level of success. You have hardcore fans, maybe fewer fans than the Giants, but still a big fan base and yet there's just this, oh well the grass is greener somewhere else and I realize that comes down to the new stadium and where the funding for that comes from and that's always going to be complicated but there are just fewer and fewer places that are going to give professional owners what they used to get.

And I think it's weird to just give all of this away to go try and do something new, air quotes, in Vegas, right? And to see a quote from John Fisher talking about the passion he saw in Golden Knights fans when he went to a hockey game in Las Vegas, like it's such a slap in the face because all of us everywhere else in this country have seen A's fans, Raiders fans, passionate fans in Oakland showing up at things for decades as some of the most passionate diehard fans on the planet. So the disconnect is just staggering to me. Like how did it get to this point? How did this actually happen? The idea of him being at a hockey game too

is just like laughable. I mean, the guy doesn't even show up for the games that he owns, you know? Yeah, I don't know. I think a lot of it again is that they wanted something given to them. They wanted something that was easy and it wasn't going to be easy, you know?

It's not, the Bay Area is not an easy place to build. Ask the Giants, right? Like it took them 30 years to get what they wanted. And ultimately they got what they wanted because they paid for it, right? Like they did not get a handout. The Warriors even, like the Warriors are originally going to move to a different part of San Francisco and the city said no. And they had to figure out something else and it was more expensive what they'd ended up doing. And you know, but because they wanted it, they got it done. Had they just sort of been like well you told us no we're gonna go you know maybe they're in Seattle I have no idea right like there's a commitment to doing things

and if you want to do them you can get them done here but nobody's gonna hold your hand and do it for you and for some reason you know they've had this sort of sense over the last you know since the Wolf Group and you know and Fisher behind the scenes took over of somebody should do this for us. And, but, you know, ultimately it only takes one jurisdiction doing it for them. Like even if 85%, 95% have kind of wised up to this idea that we aren't going to give away free stuff, you know, if Portland decides they're the one that's going to give them the free stuff, it just takes the one. If Las Vegas ends up, this together, I still think it's less than 50% chance they actually end up in Las Vegas, just given how this whole thing has played out.

But Sacramento is frankly not going to be any easier than Oakland to figure out how to fund a stadium there either. So probably not in California if they want it easy is going to be likely what happens with where they end up. But yeah, I just don't think they tried that hard. He says he tried, but you know, the lack of effort on all of those fronts to really make this happen has been evident since he took over. I do wonder what the trends are when it comes to stadiums like that. I mean, are when it comes to stadiums like that. There are people that are putting out surveys and studies that they say, oh, look at the economic benefit.

I tend to be in J.C. Bradbury's camp. He's an economist based in Georgia that has pretty much shown that none of these are a good idea. I think one of the ways that people don't understand is that, you know, the voters pay for infrastructure. And when you ask them to pay for a stadium, even if there is growth in the surrounding areas, I used to think, oh, well, San Diego must be a great example of, you know, giving

the team a stadium. They remain, they're part of the identity of San Diego, and they put it next to the gas lamp, and the gas lamp grew to it, it gentrified some neighborhoods and made some people some money. It's generally downtown gas lamp San Diego is more vibrant now than it was before the stadium was there. That seems like a win. But JC Bradbury pointed out to me,

well, what happens when all these things grow is that you need more infrastructure. So now you need more cops down there, you need to hire more cops, you need to, oh, oh, oh, we need to extend the light rail. Oh, so you go back to the taxpayers and you say, well, now we need $200 million to expand the light rail to go further into the gas lamp, you know?

And so there's all these like sort of secondary costs where they go back to the taxpayers and the taxpayers end up paying for the infrastructure that this thing costs. And also it's really hard when it comes to the way cities grow to consider what something would look like without, you know, we might actually get a chance now to see what will, what will Jack London, what will, you know, the waterfront in Oakland, what will that grow like without a stadium? We'll get to see because I think there's a natural growth pattern because, you know, cities grow and there's not that much real estate and so things get developed. I think that space might get developed by something else. It might turn into some other thing, a WNBA stadium or something, you know, like it'll be something else. It might turn into some other thing,

a WNBA stadium or something, you know, like it'll be something else and we'll get to see, you know, this alternate pathway. But I did sort of fall in love with the Howard terminal idea. I thought that that could be a really good thing for Oakland to extend that waterfront, extend the Jack London into, you know, one of the best waterfronts, maybe in the Bay Area,

maybe better than a lot of San Francisco's waterfronts because they have, you know, there's, you know, the Presidio is kind of weird and the other side is cold. You know, like this could, it could have been really cool, but I do wonder what the trends are, you know, because I think that most people, you know, that are wanting to be sober with their budgets

kind of feel the way Bradbury does. And like, I'm not sure this is gonna be a huge benefit, but at the same time, when you're talking about marketing your city, I think you become more of a national city when you have a team, you know? And then you can be like, oh, we're Charlotte. We have teams here. You know, like we're a national level team, you know, or national level city. You made the interesting point about the infrastructure. I mean, one of the things that was so complicated about this Tower Terminal thing is that they insisted on the infrastructure being built at the same time.

Right. And paid for by the city. Right. And the city had secured, you know, huge amounts of grants and whatever funding they were going to do. And they had, you know, there was almost a billion dollars that it was already going to be committed to building this infrastructure and getting all the clearances and all the different things that were going to have to happen before the stadium was built. And because they also wanted to build a lot of ancillary development at the same time, you know, which again, you look at like, you know, I remember driving home from a 49ers game one time and my dad telling me like,

this is China basin, this is where the Giants are going to build their ballpark. And looking at it and being like, this is where the Giants are going to build their ballpark and looking at it and being like there's nothing there where the Giants are going to build it it was like you know an abandoned warehouse district there might have been a freeway over but I don't know it was just it did not there was no like mad imagination that would make me think that this would be an attractive you know neighborhood and they built the stadium first right like the stadium was built There wasn't a lot around it still. There was some existing infrastructure because you had that sort of uni that was going down in that area already.

But everything that's around there now came after. They extended the Caltrain up to there after the stadium, which were... Afterwards, yes. Yeah. But, yeah. But I mean, that's a vibrant and completely different neighborhood now than it was in 1999. But that all was built afterwards, right?

And so this idea that he wanted to have everything done beforehand made the deal so much more complicated and also like, you know, maybe was unnecessary because you had an example of how all of those things could have come together after you built the stadium. And had he only wanted a stadium, you know, the thing would probably be half done by now. That part was not the tricky part to get done. Yeah, it was the extras, right? It was more than that. That's what made it so complicated.

I mean, I remember a lot of people arguing about a gondola. Right, yeah, the gondola. There had to be a gondola. Which, I mean, would be very cool. But let's be real here. If you could just get buses, it would probably be fine. Right, yeah. Hey, it's be real here. If you could just get buses, it would probably be fine. Right, yeah.

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American life, sports from the athletic, and you can get the latest dispatch, perfect your So you were both on hand for the final A's game at the Coliseum. at nytimes.com slash audio app. So you were both on hand for the final A's game at the Coliseum on Thursday, and I was watching from home 2000 miles away, and you could feel the sadness through the broadcast, through the voices of Jenny Kavnar and Dallas Braden, and just like the whole post game was hard too. You could feel the, just the crushing kind of weight of everything at that portion of the broadcast as well.

What was the actual mood like in the stadium? Was there any part of it that was like heart celebration, even though it was such a sad day? I mean, it was the last opportunity to get together with friends and familiar faces and people that had been a big part of your lives for a very long time. It was surreal. You work at games and you realize how sober most people are in terms of their emotions and everything else when you're in a press box in particular, right? But even just all

the people that are working. A baseball game takes so long to get ready for from everybody who's setting up the stadium, the people that are getting ready, the players, you know, it's an entire day and ecosystem just to get to the game and then to finish up the game and then go. And so people are usually very businesslike and people were in tears, like from the beginning. There was champagne that was being passed around from, you know, to the PR staff and some of the longtime beat writers that have been there forever. Jim Young was the official scorer yesterday

and he made the announcement at the end of the game to tell you that the official scorer on the scoreboard, all the totals were correct and this was the time of game and all that sort of stuff. And his voice is cracking as he's giving those. It was just very poignant to see how difficult this was for everybody that was there. And even those employees that were moving on with the team to Sacramento were devastated,

you know, to be in that moment. And I've never seen that in a baseball stadium. It wasn't that what you saw in the crowd was very much mirrored in the behind the scenes group, which, you know, again, you just don't see that in a professional setting very often. I hugged people I didn't expect to hug. Hugged Sue in the lunch line. She's been serving me food for 12 years, 14 years. So you know, all the security guards were just crying, you know, intermittently during

the game at different times. And it's just really hard to be out there. And I guess, you know, I thought, you know, running up to it, I was like, oh, is there going to be a riot? Like, are people going to like tear up this field and stuff? And then when I got there, I immediately, you know, I'm talking to people, I was like, no. You know, if there's a seven stages of grief, we were, we were past the anger.

You know, this was, this was acceptance. Yeah, just grief. And you realize too, how many people have been involved with this organization for literally decades. The employees at the stadium had been there for 30, 40, 50 years. People working for the team have been there for 30 years. The Beat Riders, a lot of them started covering the team in the 90s, right? You have this kind of people,

some of the PR staff I met originally when they were PR staffs, ironically, in Sacramento, years ago when I was covering the minor league team. So we've known each other for 20, 25 years. So I mean, I think that's, there's a family atmosphere. Actually, I think David Rennetti actually said this, he's the head of stadium office, and they were having kind of a party down on the field after the game and we had stopped by and got our

little dirt and all that to go home. He said, you talk to players and all the different things that are difficult about the Coliseum from a physical standpoint, but they all talked about how much they enjoyed their time there because it felt like a family. Very different from a lot of the other places where people kind of come and go and there's so much change from year to year. The same guy was helping you at the locker, the same guy was letting you into the stadium, the same people were working in the crowd, like handing the baseballs to fans to sign

and all that sort of stuff. And so I think that's something that I doubt will be replicated wherever they end up which is a sad thing to lose. The question of what's next could apply to all of those people that are part of the franchise that won't be going to Sacramento it could be applied to so many different parts of this but what do A's fans do now? Like this is this goes beyond John Fisher, right? He's been aided and abetted by MLB's other ownership groups. Like this move was supported unanimously by that group when they voted on it at an owners meeting last November. If you're an A's fan, are you just done with baseball completely?

Do you eventually find your way to a new fan base? Like it just it never would be the same. I feel like that's the part that's just so hard is you would never feel the same as you did when you were a fan of this team in Oakland. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I don't know. I think there's obviously going to be a million different choices that people will make individually. I did see what was interesting today. I don't remember seeing this surface originally, but apparently there was a report back in February that Peter Seidler,

before he passed away, had actually marshaled seven or eight owners to be against the relocation. But then he passed away and essentially they bullied it through. And who knows exactly the veracity of that, who knows who those seven or eight were. But you do wonder, you know, like, are these owners at some point going to start to look at themselves and think like, are we doing the wrong thing to our sport? You know, are there too many of these other owners that are not trying when you think you know who the Phillies and some of these teams that actually put the effort in? I don't know, like know if they can put up

with this that much longer. Why should Jerry Reinsdorf get a free ride every year? Why should the A's get a free ride every year? Why should Artie Moreno be allowed to do this to the Angels and basically destroy Shohei Otani's first seven years in the league? That I think eventually is going to irk some of them enough that perhaps there is a group that comes together at some point that says that we can't keep allowing these people to do this to us or we're going to destroy our sport from within. From the fan perspective, some of them I think are, they love baseball, they're going to find another way to love the sport, whether it's through a different team or just sort of following it.

Some of them will probably just follow independent league and go to Oakland Ballers games or minor leagues, maybe go to Stockton or San Jose. But I don't know, I think it took a lot of the joy out of it, right? I feel very differently about the league than I did two years ago. I don't know that I can say that I feel this is a league that has their fan base interests in heart. It seems a lot more like they're chasing money through gambling and international expansion and all this stuff at the expense of the people that have supported them for the hundred and plus years that they've been in business. And in the era of social media, when you can see it, you know, like we couldn't see it when Montreal moved as much.

And we certainly couldn't see it back in the days when other franchises were moving. But this is going to linger and you're going to be able to see this for a long time. And, you know, as other franchises start to make these threats, I could see it kind of a marshalling of anger from everybody else and from A's fans being the ones to maybe lead that, you know, at that point. I do also wonder, like, as writers, we're aware of the sort of media markets and also the sort of the readership figures and like sort of the way that the teams are seen in terms of readership and fandom. And so the Diamondbacks, I think of the Diamondbacks and like, that's a team that's had success. They've been in one place since they were born.

They have not sort of gathered the footing of some of the original 13 or whatever, you know? Like they're not, even Tigers, you know, in a small market have more fervent fandom, you know, the Reds, you know, they have more fervent fandom. And it was explained to me once that like, a lot of times you get fandoms passed down. Oh, those, those grandpas, those dads team, you know, and, and you kind of have to wait a while to kind of build even some of that institutional fandom that some of these expansion

teams have yet to build because they're not generations in, you know, and that makes some sense to me. I wonder how that applies, that framework applies to what's going to happen now for Oakland. You know, it's like a lot of these people have had their Oakland A's fandom passed down to them. Do they start afresh? Are they now basically an expansion team? You know, do they get some of that sort of residual where there are still people that stay fans? It's a big gamble for the sport. It sort of speaks to what you're talking about.

It's like they're thinking about a new stadium, getting a new stadium, getting more public money for this new stadium. Maybe they're thinking about a new market. They're thinking about opening up a new market instead of competing in a Bay Area. You know, they're thinking about, you know, what we're adding. This is going to be good for the sport. We're adding fans. It's Las Vegas, you know, da da da da da.

But if it turns into an expansion team, then you're losing a lot of residual fandom. And that puts the A's on a similar footing with the Dbacks. It looks like a successful franchise in some ways, but there are other ways where that is not yet a franchise that you can sort of put on the level of other teams in terms of attendance for like fervent fandom and so on and so forth. So I do wonder how much of a like full stop there is and how many people stick with it and how many don't. It's almost like in the era of political polling, I think it's not something that people can really be honest about, even if you call them and ask them,

or if you know what I mean? Like this is something that they're gonna figure out emotionally over the next couple of months. Maybe they'll be mad for a couple of months and then just be like, well, they've been my team forever, I'll go to a couple of games in Sacramento. You know what I mean?

Or would they be like, no. And it'll be, we won't know until until we may not know for five, 10 years. Well, I think the tough thing too is the way that they're, the Sacramento thing is going to work. You know, there's only 14,000 seats, right? And they've sold most of them already because they went in and did the whole corporate like kind of come and buy these for your, you know, your corporation to bring out to the ballpark and all that. So there isn't going to be an opportunity for the fan that decided well there's still my team I think I want to just go on a Thursday. I mean they're going to $500 to sit on the broom for opening day.

I happen to look on StubHub and they were already listing lawn seats for opening day against the Cubs for $500. Can you imagine spending $500 to sit on a lawn? I mean, you know, that's like literal insanity. And so yeah, there is going to be very little opportunity for the average fan to decide that's going to be something they want to enjoy. So how do you build from there? And I do think, you know, it's an interesting point with, you know, not just the Diamondbacks, but you look at the Miami Marlins, to some extent, the Tampa Bay Rays. Like these are markets that everybody always sort of envisioned because of the spring training infrastructure in all of them that, oh, there's so many baseball fans that are already here. But a lot of those fans are fans,

and the same can be said for Las Vegas. A lot of those fans are people who retired there, who had other teams they were rooting for. That's what happens in Arizona. Like when the Cubs come to town, they sell out. You're like, what? Right. That's going to happen in Vegas to some extent. They may not be A's there. Oh, for sure. I mean, my grandparents retired to Vegas from Chicago, right?

Like that's so they would have gone to Cubs Sox, Sox Fint Games, but that's about it. You know, like, and especially the prices you're going to talk about for, I mean, again, you know, any stadium that gets built in Las Vegas is going to be significantly smaller than the Coliseum. And so every ticket is going to cost a huge amount more money. And probably a lot of them are going to be sold through the casinos and all that sort of stuff. So this isn't the chance for the fan to walk up on a Thursday and see that Paul Skeens is coming to town and I want to be able to see him pitch for, you know, 30 bucks. And I do think that makes it difficult to build a new fan base.

Beyond all of this, we still have a roster. We have a whole organization of players and the players get to go on the road too. I did find it weird to be in the locker room afterwards because the players have a very different perspective on this. I mean, Brent Rooker has packed his bags 80 million times. You know, these guys are just like, Hey, tell me where to play. I'll play. And to some of them, they're kind of like, will we have more fans next year? Cause that might be more fun because it has,

they don't necessarily see all the sort of decisions that have been made in terms of marketing, in terms of what the stadium looks like. What's the stadium used to actually have some good food and used to actually have some good beer and like used to, you know, do some stuff that they stopped doing at some point. And that led to fewer fans. So to some of them, it's like an opportunity to go somewhere where maybe they'll have more fans.

Then they get peppered with all these questions. What does it mean to you, the legacy? And you're like, JJ Bleday has been here for a year and a half. Like, what legacy are you asking about? And they're all trying to do their best, you know, because they can feel it and they know that they've been a part of something,

but at the same time, like, they haven't felt it in terms of day-to-dayness. To them, it's been a place that, you know, has terrible facilities and they, you know, no fans. That's kind of what they've felt for the last few years. Baseball players are so insular in terms of how they operate during a season. I mean, they may post on social media, but they are not out there reading everything that's out there, right? Like it was interesting on opening day, you know, there was going to be a boycott

where people were going to show up but not go into the stadium. And people have been talking about that for months, right? It was not like a surprise kind of thing. And the clubhouse like didn't know that at all, right? I mean, they had no idea that it was happening. Steven Vogt, who was managing the other team, who was also intimately aware of everything that had been going on, was also unaware that this was going to be the atmosphere for his first major league game until, you know, we told him pregame, right? So I think that has allowed them as a group to stay really tight. You know, this is a very tight-knit group. A lot of them are pretty homegrown or relatively homegrown in the sense of

having played the majority of their major league career in Oakland. And I do think homegrown or tightly knit teams do tend to play together better than the ones that are sort of desperately put together. I mean, the Dodgers may be a little bit of an exception because you know you've got that kind of checkbook. But I think for the most part, you know, the teams that you see come together like the Tigers and that, like they do that because they've been together for a while, they've gone through the wars together quote unquote. And this is, for better or worse, a roster that has gone through a lot over the last two years together. That can't make up for talent, but I do think as we start to talk about it a little bit,

there is some more talent there than what we saw if we had this conversation at this time last year. So probably some of that will benefit them, you know, having had to go through all that. That being said, the playing conditions in Sacramento, we'll have to see. I mean, we don't even know what the ballpark is going to play like. So it's going to be very interesting to see Whatever strides they made from a pitching perspective this year It's gonna be difficult to know what to expect next year with that hitting like, you know You're well aware of sort of the minor league conditions and stuff like that it as a park has played neutral

neutral ish It neutral for the PCL. Is that Is that the right way to say it? It had played more neutral when it first opened. For whatever reason, I think it had been trending a little bit more offensively. I know we had talked to Logan Webb when the Giants had scrimmaged there to start the season. He had talked about how, I mean, he's from Sacramento. He grew up in Ace Fan. He was very conflicted about this whole idea of them moving there.

But he was saying, like, I really hope that they figure out a way not to have the allies play as quick as they do here. He felt like it played like a more offensive ballpark than, I guess, certainly Oracle and probably the Coliseum. So, you know, and it's smaller and it's hotter and the wind isn't there and you don't have the fog, right? So at the very least it's gonna play more friendly to hitting than the Coliseum did. In the air for sure. And they're also putting turf down. Do you expect that to help ground balls? Yeah, that's gonna play faster. So I think it'll be an offensive park. You know, and the dimensions are very normal, right?

Which I mean is but you don't see that in a lot of ballparks now things tend to move around in the very normal, right? Which I mean, is, but you don't see that in a lot of ballparks now. Things tend to move around in the outfield, right? So yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think there's, there's a lot that they're going to have to figure out during the season about how things are playing. Within this organization, there's been a lot of continuity in the front office. And the thing that has surprised me the most, I think we may have talked about this on a previous time you've joined us on the show Melissa, is that they have done a surprisingly poor job in some of their big trades in recent years and that has made this downturn a little uglier than past attempts to tear it down and rebuild it.

And this year it has been a step forward despite the Matt Chapman trade a few years ago and the Sean Murphy deal looking pretty bad overall. Where do things stand right now? Is this team two, three years away from being a playoff caliber team? How much of their player development seems to be working well and how much of it still needs to catch up to other teams around the league? Again, I think they are in better shape than they were a year ago. I don't think these things come together overnight. I do think some of the pitching has come together a

little bit. You know you said JT Ginn made the start last night or really not yesterday and he also had pitched Friday against the Yankees and gotten to the fifth inning before giving up you know a run and he came over in that Chris Bassett deal and that was you know so there's a little bit of didn't do anything for a while and then all of a sudden, you know, could be a decent starter. Gunnar Hoglund had a very nice season, finally healthy. And you know, he was the Matt Chapman in the Matt Chapman deal. And so you start to see some of those guys, Mason Barrett, who they got in the Lucas Ersig deal with Kansas City pitched very well for Midland after the trade.

So there's more pitching coming than there was before. That said, their pitching is still significantly behind where their hitting development is at this point. They've graduated a decent number of position player prospects, but they have a number more that are coming pretty quickly. I think Colby Thomas was their player of the year for Baseball America and strikes out too much but power speed good defense High energy kind of guy could join Lawrence Butler in that outfield being kind of interesting there

Nick Kurtz their pick, you know in the first round this year got hurt in double-a But like his debut before he got hurt was probably the best of the first rounders that played this year so far And I don't know that he needs a whole lot of time in the minor leagues before he gets there. I think you saw Tyler Soderstrom make some strides this year after a really disappointing debut last year. How they figure out playing both of those guys since they're really both first basemen is kind of an interesting story.

Along with Rooker, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah, both left-handed. But there's a lot of power. I think they've got a lot of power, they've got some good athletes they can run, they need to figure out how to get on base more as an organization they need, ironically, they need to swing and miss less. But you know there's athletes and there's power which I think

you can see working together in a lineup at some point. That said, a playoff team is just slightly over 500, right, these days? So they could sneak in at that point. I don't think they're going to be challenging where the Astros have been the last few years in the next year or two, but could they sneak in a third wild card in a year or two? Maybe. We'll see. When I hear you talk about that stuff, I'm like, you know, this is why, you know, one of the reasons the angels have kind of languished,

I think, is that they will invest in the major league team. And so people think, oh, well, you know, he must spend money. But what we know, at least from COVID, when they just disbanded the whole minor leagues, you know, and stopped paying all their coaches. And then what we also know from certain hiring practices and firing practices is that they don't really invest in coaching and technology

and infrastructure in the minor leagues in a way that can that can improve your player development. And I think that, you know, pitching player development in today's age is actually not too hard to turn around. We heard news today that Heim Blum is going to be in charge of hiring a new director of player development for the Cardinals. He's gonna have an expanded role for the Cardinals

as Katie Wu is reporting. And so, you know, I actually have hoped that they could turn that around fairly quickly. I think we've seen the Pirates turn their pitching development around pretty quickly. You know, they've had a harder time with the hitting. And so, you know, when I see a team that has hitters and just needs pitching, I'm like, okay, you know, they've had a harder time with the hitting. And so, you know, when I see a team that has hitters and just needs pitching, I'm like, okay, you know,

even like, you know, one thing you can do for strikeouts, like Traject is like a, you know, a pretty expensive piece of equipment, but it shows the like pitcher that night and, you know, in a hologram and it's like the most advanced piece of, you know, sort of hitting technology that we've got that could help. But I don't see the A's spending that money.

Replacing coaches, it doesn't cost a lot, but it does cost some money. You would want to have maybe two, $300,000 to kind of fire a bunch of coaches and then hire coaches that are on the upper end that are going to to cost a little bit more. You know what I mean? You would want to have another maybe $200,000 to make sure you have the top of the line tech in every place along the way. And so with this culture of sort of loyalty, I think, you just don't see the A's going out and changing what they're doing in terms of pitching development. So I remain a little bit pessimistic that they're, unless they get lucky or unless these

private development labs that these pitchers go to do the work for them, you know, like do they all go to tread and drive line on their own and get better? That could be something that happens. And they're just like, yeah, see, we didn't have to pay for it. They all went and did it on their own. I mean, you know, they've done it a little in half measures, right? Like they did build a velocity lab, they did have some of these things, but they don't have a very big analytics department, for instance, that they've been extremely lean there. They do have more coordinators

than the Cardinals I learned today when I was reading Katie's story. I didn't realize how lean they were there. The A's have always had a lot more roving coordinators than that, but they are one of the leaner staffed minor league player development groups in general. Because those coordinators give them the plans, you know, give the pitchers the plans and like give them detailed, you know, things offseason plans. Like I've heard some of the offseason plans for the A's are ridiculously simple and are like things like, you know, throw strikes. You look at, if you merge the A's and the Giants farm systems together, you would actually have a good one because the Giants have not been able to figure

out how to, how to develop hitting at all really. And they've had a tough time with, um, you know, finding like athletes that will produce, um, you know, as, as big leaguers, but they are pitching is down to a science. I don't think they need to, they probably don't need to invest as much draft capital as they do with pitchers because they can turn fairly average looking pitchers into really good ones.

You mentioned something about draft with the A's. So you were saying that the A's don't really draft pitching the same way? Up high, they have not drafted very many. I mean, you look at like Mason Miller was notable in 2021 because you know, he was drafted in the third round, right? Like that's, I think they have a philosophy and you know, right or wrong, when you can't go out and buy a superstar, you draft for superstars, right? And so they take bigger risks higher in the draft on potential position

players who can be superstar type players. And you're going to hit and you're going to miss with that sometimes, you know, I guess, unless you're Paul Skeens, there aren't as many pitchers that you can look at that you think are going to be superstars coming into the draft necessarily. And so when you have a philosophy like that, you end up with taking a lot of short stops, which they have done. It's an organization filled with short stops and short stops can be a lot of different things so there's nothing wrong with taking short stops but I think they're looking for you know the Matt Chapmans that can be essentially a star that's cheap for them

for a very long time but to do that you're not gonna get pitching till the third fourth fifth round and you know you're missing out on the best arms when you do that. Yeah I think unless you have a system for scouting and development that is on the level of the guardians or the brewers, the dodgers, where you can take college guys that slide to that range and add a couple of ticks, add spin, add something. Well, the guardians, I mean, their ability

to take high school guys and turn them, I mean, the success rate they have with the highest risk. And nobody's taking high school. Yeah, they're just on their own. They live in the highest risk element of the draft and they've done an incredible job. So yeah, I mean, I think, again, it's a league that has, there was a lot of people copying other people's work, right, like for a long time. And then now other organizations are doing well. And so you're going to start to see how other people copying other people's work but

the ones that didn't have the work originally are gonna be behind and I think and you know yeah I think you can say like their pitching development you know is behind at this point you know for the A's. You know that said they've had success also with finding kind of you know Sean Manaya, Chris Bassett types who may not have thrived in other places before but were able finding kind of, you know, Sean Manaya, Chris Bassett types who may not have thrived in other places before, but were able to kind of grow into these really, you know, reliable mid-rotation arms in the system that they have. But what will be interesting again is when you move away from the ballpark they've had

and the consistency of knowing how that plays for so long. Yeah, like what will JP Sears look like next year, you know, like? the ballpark they've had and the consistency of knowing how that plays for so long. Yeah, like what will JP Sears look like next year? You know, like yeah, how do you identify a new Chris Bassett? Like you just it's it's not It's not an easy thing to do and by the time they figure it out They'll be on to whatever the other new stadium is gonna be. So I think that's gonna be really tricky. Yeah I also think the situation in Sacramento temporarily is going to be even worse for them free agent wise. Like the park is not pitcher friendly the way the Coliseum was. So the short term stopgap contract guys.

Even the Ross Tripling Alex Woods won't necessarily want to sign there. They're not going to sign on for that situation or that park. So I think that's going to put even more pressure on them to find their pitching internally if they're going to make this happen So Brent Rooker had an amazing season this year He's two homers away from going 40 10 even if he doesn't hit anymore on 30 38 and 11 from Brent Rooker No one expected that 298 369 567 slash line. He's always hit the ball hard He's got a sixteen point six percent barrel rate this year

The question has always been, can he cut down on the swing and miss enough to make that power play up consistently? This year, the answer has been, yeah, he actually can. I'm always skeptical when someone does this in their late 20s, Rooker's gonna turn 30 on the first day in November. How would you try to project the future for Brent Rooker

coming off of just an absolutely amazing 2024 season, which came off the year which the playing time was starting to slip a little bit in 2023. Like he didn't finish the second half of 2023 as an everyday player, which was a bit of a surprise given the power that he'd shown last year. Yeah, I mean, he didn't even start this season as an everyday player. Actually, that first week or two after he was one of those players that people thought was getting benched because he was wearing the bracelet, right? Like the last dive bar bracelet.

I mean, he's always been a little behind with the age curve because he was an older prospect coming into baseball in general, right? Like he bloomed a little late in college and then so came to the league a little older. I think, you know, he had a breakout in 2020 with the twins and then got hurt. And of course it was COVID anyway, and then didn't really get much of a chance like that. So, you know, part of it is this may be his prime and, you know, he may have a two-year, three-year window of being a better version of himself than what we had ever expected to see before. I, you know, I wouldn't expect him to hit for average like that. I don't know that that's who he is necessarily.

But I could see him putting together 30 Homer Seasons for a couple more years. He's in great shape if he's just having to focus on de-aging and not worrying about the defense. He's got that Chris Davis feel to him a little bit, like of that sort of can swing for the fences and make an impact that way. And if that's all a team needs for him to do, you know, I think he's in pretty good shape to do that.

You know, but he's also he's a really smart player, right? Like he he he does find things to work on. It's not kind of like he's up there just sort of doing the same thing over and over again. So he has made adjustments that are significant as well. So who knows, you know, with guys that can figure it out like that on their own, I think there probably always is a little bit of a chance to kind of see some more sustained success than you would expect. He asked me regularly about these new MLB savant,

stat drops and like, he actually found a stat on MLB savant, on MLB AMS, like stat feed that I'd never seen and I didn't know what it was. And I had to ask Mike Piatrello what it was. So, you know, he's out there looking and I do, I put him in the class of sort of Jed Lowry and Sam Fold as guys that are very analytical in their thinking. And I think, you know, sometimes that leads to getting the most out of your physical, your traits that you've got. But what he has right now is plus plus bat speed, elite level bat speed, elite level

game power. And I would just suppose that what happens on balls and play and what happens with the strikeout rate might fluctuate here or there. And he may have a season in the next three where he hits 220 or something, but I do think the 30 homerun power would be there every year. Yeah, and you said about free agents. I mean, if they're smart, since signing free agents

is probably gonna be almost impossible. If they're smart, the money they spend is extending Brent Rooker, is extending Lawrence Butler, kind of making a commitment to saying, these are some of the guys that are gonna be here for a few years. So you know, pony up to see the team that is going to be here for a little while, because the only people that are going to take that money, I think at this point are the ones

that are there and you know, don't have the freedom to go seek out something else. Yeah, maybe try to build a team and sell the team that you have actually constructed instead of telling people to come watch the team that's visiting, right? That was another classic John Fisher wonder. Come see your internet home runs, et cetera. That wouldn't be good. It's going to be against us. But sure, sure, John, we'll do that. As far as Lawrence Butler goes, he's going to be on, I think, a lot of factor fluke type columns and panels and things this winter. People are going to be wrestling with this idea that maybe Butler is a superstar. And I think it's it's possible. Right.

So what do you think his true ceiling is? Do you think we can see a full season that looks like what he's done since his return from Triple A? He is so interesting because the first year that he played pro ball, the first full year he was in short season in Vermont. And I mean, he barely looked playable. He was like a six round pick, I believe. And, you know, there was a question coming out of COVID about whether he would be like released literally like released that

year. But he had spent COVID back home in the Atlanta area working with Michael Harris working, you know, with that whole group that I think Delano de Shields was leading or, no, Marquis Skri... one of the two. I always mix those guys up. They were the classic Braves outfield and Expos. But anyway, you know, they made gains as a group together and they've continued to get better as a group together. And you see them all around Major League Baseball kind of being the next big stars. And he seeks out that group. He gets input from them. He works really hard. There are going to be things he goes home this offseason that he works on. I think defense will probably be the main thing to try to improve there. But again, there's swing and miss there that I think is always going to affect the batting average. But he does have a good idea of the strike zone.

He hits the ball really, really hard. He's got plus speed. He's committed to being the best version of himself, too. When you have somebody, again, like Rooker, who's going to invest that much in themselves to get better, I think you can expect good outcomes. One thing that really makes me feel good about his season is that he didn't make one adjustment. I think he made two or three. I mean, the big sort of highly touted adjustment is that they asked him to kind of keep his head still at the plate when he came up the

second time. And that helped him in terms of the swing and miss and seeing the ball longer and seeing the ball better. But what happened after that was that he went on a homer barrage and I remember there was like this kind of crazy period where I I'm looking now. It's like What do you do? He had like five homers and he three homers in a game. He had six and five days Yeah, yeah He had three homers at Philadelphia and I mean he just came and he lit the world on fire in terms of power.

And that's how we got in everyone's on everyone's radar. But what I, and I talked to him about it. I said, well, you've been doing this now since you, with the sort of adjustment with the head, you've been feasting on the fastballs, right? And like that's those homers, most of those homers are on fastballs. You've been doing your damage on fastballs.

So what I've seen is a little bit more sliders in the zone since that sort of power breakdown. And he's like, yup, like that's gonna be the next thing. And what I saw from him the next couple of weeks was, he went from that power barrage to a hitting streak. And he had like a 20 game hit streak. And the power wasn't necessarily the same. It wasn't like 20 games of homers, you know?

It was like, it was a lot of singles. And so what I saw from him during that period was he sort of foresaw, he saw what they were doing to him even as he was feasting on the fastball. He's like, okay, now they're gonna start doing the junk. And with the junk, he kind of had enough of a like, fillet it to the opposite field or, or, you know, he had enough of to like enough back control to like do

something with the, the, the breaking balls in the zone. So that's not, that's not one adjustment. That's two for me and two adjustments in one season from a 24 year old. You know, I watched a lot of Brandon Belt. He's my example of guys who takes really long time to make adjustments and he would take years sometimes to make adjustments. You know, when I see a guy make two adjustments

in three months, I feel like that's pretty cool. Like that speaks well to his ability to kind of, you know, work as pitchers change their book against him. So I think that physical tools are all there and the, you know, the kind of adjustments machine is working pretty well. Yeah, and he's such a smart base runner too. He's got, I think, 18 stolen bases and 18 chances this year, right?

And he understands, I think, where his speed can be helpful and where to kind of go back and lay off it when it's not gonna help the team. And I think that also just speaks to a lot of maturity, you know, from someone that young, because you see speed like that and you see, oh, I'm going to chase 2020 and I'm going to do all these different things and I'm going to start running irrationally.

And he's still, again, picked his spots to do it in the places that are going to help the team. So yeah, no, I think, I think of all the players on their current roster, he has the biggest chance to be a real bona fide star. A lot of ways he can make it happen. There's other stuff that could go right too. He could get more from Zach Galoff next year.

He's trying to go through some adjustments. There's a core coming together. Jacob Wilson's a guy we've talked a lot about in this show. It's a Stephen Kwan sort of profile at the plate in terms of extreme contact But that could work if there's power around him Shea Langley still looks like a guy that may have one more level at the plate And it's a nice little core coming together on this. Can I go off script for one question for Melissa? Sure I've seen the fan grass has like Luis Morales number one as mother pitching prospects

And you mentioned a couple other guys. Which of their pitching prospects that didn't pitch in the major leagues this year are you most excited about for next year? Yeah, I think that's a good, I mean, Morales definitely has the highest ceiling, for sure. He's, I think he's still got some control stuff to go, but he's a Mason Miller X-type arm with the 100 plus. Like he can carry that deep into, into starts.

He had some injury stuff at the beginning of the year that cleared up. I'm very curious to see Mason Barrett. I think a lot of the stuff looked better than his numbers looked in the aggregate when he was in Kansas City's system. He came over and immediately made a couple of adjustments with Midland and looked really good. How do you spell that last name?

It's Mason. It's Barnett. Barnett. Okay. Yeah, sorry. Okay, Barnett. I think there's a good chance that you'll see him come in and be a number three starter sort of solid type in the rotation there. Good strikeout rates in the minors. Yeah, yeah. And I think Texas League is not an easy league to pitch in, obviously, and so he spent a lot of time there. You know they

have some younger guys that I think like the injuries have kind of thrown some into the works. They were very excited about Steve Echevarria. He sort of you know got rushed up to full season ball and it didn't quite come together with him in Stockton this year but you know he's like 19 so certainly a guy to keep an eye on. But yeah Morales is definitely the highest ceiling guy. I just don't know how quickly you're going to see him in the big leagues. There's also the the lingering question for some. Will Mason Miller move back into the rotation at some point?

I just think that the temptation is out there because of the success of Garrett Crochet and there are some older guys like Ronald Lopez that did it, too. But Crochet is like the perfect example of a guy that's dealt with a lot of injuries, had excellent stuff, white socks situation a little different than the A's right now, but you could still look at it and say, well, what if we can get 130 innings out of him instead? And the payoff could be huge, but it comes with risk, of course, too. It's interesting. I mean, they were very careful with how they used him this year. You know, there were not very many back to backs.

There were not very many times they asked him to go two innings really until the second half of the season when I think they were feeling better about where he was health-wise. This is the first full season he's had as a professional that he got through without a real injury. I mean, the one that was on the training table with the broken hand was not like a real pitching injury. So you know, I think there'll probably be some assessment with how he comes out of it. But I don't know, I think when you're as good at something as he is at closing, I'm not

so sure that moving him to the rotation makes a lot of sense. You know, that said, like you look at Jordan Hicks and what he could be next year, having done the starting transition with the Giants this year You know maybe but I don't know I just I think the fact that you got 60 innings or whatever it was out of Mason milling this year and he was healthy It should be enough of an accomplishment that probably they they keep him where he is. I mean 2022 looks like it was 14 innings 2023 he had um He had a trap injury. I believe and you know, he there was whispers about elbow stuff in college

We've never fully gotten like exactly what those things were, you know last year was the elbow So, you know, there's been last year was like 50 ish innings Yeah, you know and he was starting last year right like when he came up he was he was a starter but he's not hitting 103 as a starter right like he's he's 90 i mean he's not he's you know 99 but i think where where the stuff gets super special is when he can be like really you know focused in on just those those six batters or whatever he's facing yeah i mean it's best closer in baseball stuff as it is so they don't have to do anything and they still get a lot out of Mason Miller and I know we all enjoy watching him because

he's one of the best relievers in the game already. Melissa, thank you so much for the time today. Gave us twice as much as what I asked for. Really really appreciate you joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me on. If you don't have a subscription to The Athletic, you can check out all of Melissa's great work. A lot of great tributes around the Coliseum,

the A's leaving Oakland, theathletic.com slash rates and barrels, $2 a month, gets you in the door if you don't have that already. That's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening. College football is back like never before. I'm David Ubbin and I host until Saturday, the Athletics Leveled Up College Football podcast.

Three times a week, you'll hear me and my co-host, fellow athletics senior writer Chris Finini and two time national champion Damien Harris embrace the sports new madness with you. We're also just gonna have a ton of fun enjoying all the things that make college football great. Check out the brand new one till Saturday every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday this fall. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts.