Why the cheapest team in US sport is finally spending money… at the weirdest possible time

For years, it’s been all about money with Major League Baseball’s Athletics.

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The Oakland A’s, as they were known until recently, were so famously cheap they were featured in Moneyball as the team succeeding on a shoestring budget.

They got even cheaper over the last few years, taking advantage of a league without a salary cap, paying $US62.1 million to their roster in 2024 – less than a fifth of what the New York Mets paid theirs ($US314.7 million).

All of this was despite playing in a pretty large market, the San Francisco Bay Area. But they let their stadium run down into disrepair, drove off fans with a cheap, bad roster (losing 307 games across three years), and eventually made everyone still hanging on angry by deciding to move to Las Vegas.

Theoretically, the Las Vegas A’s will start playing in the desert in 2028, though their stadium fittingly feels like a mirage at the moment. It remains to be seen when and indeed if it’ll be built.

Until then, the A’s have moved from Oakland to nearby Sacramento – staying in California because it allows them to keep their lucrative TV deal – and into a minor-league stadium.

It will be a sad sight, with the biggest names in the sport forced to trek to the 14,000-seat Triple A-level venue also housing the Sacramento River Cats. It’s perhaps the equivalent of the AFL’s North Melbourne saying they’ll move to Canberra for some weird reason, and then playing down at Frankston Oval for a few years first.

But the A’s have also decided that now, of all times, is the right time to start paying players big money.

Infielder Gio Urshela, 33, has agreed to terms with the temporarily-Sacramento-soon-to-be-Vegas Athletics, The Post’s Jon Heyman confirmed Saturday.

The news comes less than two weeks after the A’s — who had the lowest payroll among major-league teams in 2024 — announced they had solicited the services of another former-Yankee, pitcher Luis Severino, with the richest contract in franchise history.

The deal for Severino, 30, is worth $US67 million ($AU107 million) over three years.

Details regarding Urshela’s contract have not yet been released.

The Colombian infielder played in Yankees pinstripes from 2019-21, amassing a .292 batting average, 296 hits, 153 RBIs and 41 home runs across 291 games.

During his first season in the Bronx, the then-27-years-old posted his best numbers, setting career marks with a .341 batting average, 74 RBIs and 3.8 wins above replacement.

The A’s are cooking up a steadily improving roster, though how it all fits together remains unclear.

They are coming off a calamitous season that, nonetheless, somewhat exceeded expectations.

Bolstered in large part by booming stars in left fielder Brent Rooker and bullpen arm Mason Miller, the franchise scraped together an almost-respectable 69 wins.

For a team that seemed all but destined to rival the woes of the 121-loss White Sox, 2024 was an unequivocal step in the right direction.

Now, with a few foundational pieces in place and the team just several years out from its arrival in Vegas, the A’s are gearing up to build something worth watching.

Most every player rostered in 2024 is set to return in 2025. And the addition of a workhorse starter in Severino signals that, at minimum, owner John Fisher felt there were enough positives to take away from last season to merit the expensive acquisition.

While Urshela doesn’t carry the same kind of pizzazz — and he likely won’t carry anything close to the same kind of cap hit — he is still a solid hitter and defensively responsible.

And what’s more captivating in Las Vegas than defensive responsibility?

It all sounds quite noble, the team finally coughing up the cash to actually try and win some games, but there’s a much less exciting reason behind the deals.

MLB’s collective bargaining agreement forces teams to pay a certain amount to their roster based on how much the team earns from the revenue-sharing pool – an equalisation measure which sees the big-spending and big-earning teams, like the New York Yankees and Mets or world champion Los Angeles Dodgers, indirectly sending to the smaller sides.

ESPN reported the A’s will receive $US70 million in revenue sharing next season, which means they must spend $US105 million on their roster, or else they could receive a grievance from the players’ union.

Put more simply: they’re overpaying a few players to come play in their minor-league stadium because if they didn’t, they’d get in trouble.

Perhaps it’ll turn them into a winner earlier than expected, but it’s not exactly listening to the fans, who understandably gave up on the A’s in their last few years in Oakland because it was very obvious ownership had too.

Ownership that, if it gets its way, will move the A’s to Las Vegas and join the league-wide trend of new stadiums taking money from the local government and going into the pocket of a billionaire via lucrative real estate ventures.

Aren’t American sports romantic?

Portions of this article were originally published at the New York Post and were republished with permission.