OAKLAND — Things are not good in Oakland right now.
The Phillies’ series-opening win against the Athletics on Friday night came in front of a crowd of 16,084. It’s the fifth-smallest crowd the Phillies have faced this season, but the fifth-largest the A’s have drawn — third, if you remove Opening Day and Tuesday’s emotional “reverse boycott” in protest of the team’ ongoing relocation efforts.
The Phillies provided the MLB-leading 53rd loss of the season to the A’s, who are on pace to go 43-119. That would be tied for the third-most losses in a season in MLB history.
Things are not good in Oakland right now. The Nevada legislature approved on Wednesday $380 million in public funding for the A’s to move to the Las Vegas Strip, the last significant hurdle the franchise needed to clear to all but finalize its migration.
All of it — the crowd (or lack thereof), the losing, the relocation, the three of those things in tandem — is, of course, exactly by design.
Things are not good in Oakland right now.
It’s an impossible situation for any Major League manager, especially one with less than two years of managerial experience like the Athletics’ Mark Kotsay. And though he doesn’t know Kotsay personally, Phillies manager Rob Thomson offered his praise to the A’s skipper before Saturday’s matinee at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.
“The fact that I haven’t really heard much about Mark tells me he’s pretty calm and taking this thing like a pro,” Thomson said. “Because I’m sure it is a tough situation. It’s not easy losing a lot of games. It’s not. Just gotta stay positive and keep your eye on the future and keep developing players and I think they’re doing a great job of that … I’ve heard nothing but good things about him.”
Depending on how the schedule plays out, this weekend might be the final time the Phillies ever set foot in the Coliseum, which the A’s are expected to call “home” (stated ironically) in 2024, the final year of their stadium lease. They’ll find a stopgap for the 2025-27 seasons before moving to their new Vegas stadium in 2028, if everything goes according to plan.
The Phillies don’t have a long history in Oakland. Saturday is their 11th game ever at the venue, which began hosting the A’s in 1968. They’re 4-6 there all time.
Thomson, however, has a slightly longer one. He visited Oakland 40 times while with the New York Yankees from 2008-17.
“It was kinda weird,” Thomson said of walking into the stadium on Friday now as a Phillie, “because I haven’t been here in so long. So it’s like going back in time for me. But I’ll tell you what — we’ve had a lot of battles in this ballpark. We had really good clubs when I was with the Yankees.”
Any favorite memories?
“I mean, I wish I could say the Jeter play,” Thomson said. “But I wasn’t here.”
Fair enough. But Thomson was right, anyway, about the battles of years past — the Yankees went 21-19 in Oakland while he was on board, including an 18-inning loss in 2013.
That 2013 season was the second of two straight years the A’s won at least 94 games, grabbed the AL West crown and saw their season end with a shutout home loss in a winner-take-all ALDS Game 5 against Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers. (Talk about a painful déjà vu.)
Those were the days the A’s would pack the not-quite-sightly but historic and oddly charming Coliseum with a rabid fanbase that will invest its energy into the product when the product gives it the slightest inkling of a reason to.
Fast-forward a decade, and perhaps the best reason to pack the Coliseum these days is to show ownership that while there might be a litany of problems with the longevity of Oakland A’s baseball in its current manifestation, the fans are not among them.
“You feel bad for the fan base,” Thomson said. “Because this is a storied franchise with a lot of history here. Lot of great players, Hall of Famers came through here. So you feel for the fan base. But, you know, I guess it’s a business decision.”
