Kaval: New stadium would allow A’s to have top-10 payroll
The revenue from a waterfront ballpark at Howard Terminal would allow the traditionally penny-pinching A’s to pay as much as the top 10 teams in baseball, according to team president Dave Kaval.
“We can go from having one of the lowest five payrolls in the league to a top-five or -10, depending on the year,” Kaval told this news organization on Tuesday. “It’s going to be such a remarkable change in our business and I think with the savvy and business acumen of (executive vice president) Billy Beane and (general manager) David Forst, giving them that type of resource is going to be incredible and that’s what we’re striving to do.”
Oakland city officials will vote July 20 on the A’s $12 billion development proposal in West Oakland. Kaval, the A’s and MLB say Howard Terminal is the only site they will consider in Oakland. Kaval, owner John Fisher and other team officials visited Las Vegas last week to explore possible new
ballpark sites.
Despite their success on the field, the A’s annually rank in the cellar of MLB payroll. They have spent close to the league average just once since this ownership group bought the team in 2005 and have avoided ranking in the bottom 10 just twice since 1998. Oakland had the lowest payroll in the league in 2018.
The A’s opening day payroll this season was $86 million, 23rd among the 30 MLB teams, according to stevetheup.com.
To crack the top 10, as Kaval suggested, the A’s would have to nearly double their current payroll. The Chicago Cubs opened the season with the No. 10 largest payroll at just less than $150 million. The Los Angeles Dodgers had the largest opening day payroll at just more than $250 million.
Cost concerns have been cited over the years for the A’s inability to retain many of their star players or to pursue highpriced free agents. During the 2019 winter meetings, Beane and Forst said they were told by team ownership they could not extend contracts of current stars such as Matt Chapman, Matt Olson or Ramón Laureano until a new ballpark is under construction.
“All the things we’re doing parallel what goes on with the stadium,” Beane said in 2019. “Until we know that’s going to happen, we have to stay relatively nimble.”
Kaval said Tuesday of reaching a stadium deal: “Once we do that, all the things that fans have been concerned about, which are fair, can be solved,” he said. “Hopefully people can get on board and see the ballpark is the solution for the concern and will enable us to retain our players for longer and that will be a positive thing for our fans and players themselves.”
Kaval added: “Our success depends on having a new ballpark. We have a facility right now where a free agent doesn’t want to be at the facility. Everything comes back to the facility, and that’s the fundamental problem with the franchise is that we don’t have a home that is commensurate with other teams in the league. It’s long past due. We have to solve that and do everything we can to solve that as quickly as possible.”
History doesn’t suggest a new stadium immediately changes teams’ approaches to spending.
None of the four teams who have built new stadiums since 2010 — the Texas Rangers, Atlanta Braves, Miami Marlins and Minnesota Twins — have a top 10 payroll. In fact, the Braves are the highest at 14th.
Petco Park in San Diego, Progressive Field in Cleveland and Oracle Park in San Francisco are ballparks the A’s often point to as examples of their downtown, urban vision, and those teams have shown mixed spending habits after opening their ballparks.
After hovering around league average in payroll in the years prior to their ballpark’s opening in 2000, the Giants have signed checks for top 10 payrolls in 15 of the last 20 seasons. Farhan Zaidi inherited a Giants team that in 2018 had the second-highest payroll in baseball and has whittled it to the 14th highest on Opening Day.
The Padres opened Petco Park in 2004, but until 2019, the Padres still consistently ranked among the lowest payroll teams, including in the bottom four from 200913. With the emergence of sensation Fernando Tatis Jr., the Padres signed free agent third baseman Manny Machado to a $300 million deal in 2019. Their payroll jumped into the top 10 in 2020 and ranks eighth this season after Tatis Jr.’s extension and the addition of pitching stars Blake Snell and Yu Darvish.
The Indians opened Progressive Field in 1994 and ranked in the top 10 for payroll from 1998 to 2002. But the Indians’ payroll has dropped below league average for every season since 2003 and this season only the Pirates and the Orioles had smaller payrolls on Opening Day.