Elephant Rumblings: Happy New Year A’s Fans

2025 will be an interesting year

Happy New Year, A’s Nation! I hope everyone rung in the new year safely and happily. 2025 is shaping up to be the most interesting year in Oakland Athletics team history. If for nothing else, it is starting off to be a year of uncertainty.

With the A’s playing their final game at the Oakland Coliseum in September their next regular season game will be the first in Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park. No one knows with any certainty what it will be like to play 81 games in a minor league facility, sharing it with the local River Cats! Depending on who’s analysis you believe, the park could play neutral or be a favorable hitter’s park. Thankfully clearer heads prevailed and instead of replacing the current grass surface with artificial turf, the team will stick with the natural grass. It will be interesting, to say the least, how the grounds crew will be able to maintain the grass in the scorching Sacramento heat with games played nearly every day by either the major league or minor league club.

As we were ushering in the New Year last night, the Dave Kaval era ended. Yesterday was his final day as president of the Athletics. To date, A’s owner John Fischer has only named an interim, Sandy Dean, a longtime business partner with the Fisher family. The search for a permanent replacement will begin early in the new year.

There are still some unanswered questions about the roster. While the additions of Gio Urshela at third base, righty hurler Luis Severino and lefty Jeffrey Springs to the starting rotation will fill some needs, as Connor Ashford wrote yesterday, the team needs to add quite a bit of salary to the books if they hope to avoid a MLBPA grievance. Both trades and free agent signings can fill some of the needs. In a recent MLB piece asking who the most likely free agents might be for each team, A’s beat reporter for MLB.com Martín Gallegos suggested that former Cardinals set up man Andrew Kittredge might be a reasonable target since the bullpen lost some valuable arms at the trade deadline and to off season moves. It’s unclear if GM David Forst will make moves before a new president is named or if the current structure allows him the flexibility to spend money.

While there are lots of unanswered questions, as the calendar flips to January of 2025, the one certainty is that baseball is not too far away. In fact, I think I see it from here…

Other than that, Happy New Year AN!

A’s Coverage:

• A Podcast Tribute to Ricky Henderson
• Athletics 2024 Season in Review: Brett Harris
• Athletics 2024 Season In Review: Easton Lucas
• Best of 2024: Last A’s Last Game at The Coliseum

MLB News & Interest:

• Each Team’s Breakout player for 2025
• 18 exciting prospects set for full-season debuts
• Roki Sasaki back in Japan mulling next move
• Today in Baseball History

Best of X:

Lawrence Butler makes our Top Bat Flips of 2024 countdown at #9.

Happy Belated birthday to one of the greatest living Hall of Famers!