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The A’s publicly said, quite awhile ago, that they planned on increasing their payroll in the future. They also stated that the expectation was that this would begin in the 2024-2025 offseason — it was clear that signing players might be difficult for them, given convincing anyone to intentionally play for them in a minor-league stadium in Sacramento for a few years was going to be a tough sell, but trades were always an option, too.
They’ve recently added a couple of expensive — for them — players onto the roster, which of course implies that it truly was Oakland holding them back, or that their ways have changed, or whatever positive interpretation they hope you take away from this for their benefit; MLB’s own website is of course happy to promote a “new direction” for the franchise. The truth of the matter is much simpler, however: the A’s have to spend, or else a grievance will be filed against them.
Evan Drellich, at The Athletic, said as much after the three-year, $67 million deal, which just so happens to be a record free agent contract for the A’s:
Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement requires teams to carry a payroll more than 1 1/2 times the amount they receive from local revenue sharing. A club in violation doesn’t automatically receive punishment, but puts itself at greater risk of penalty if the union brings a grievance.
Several small-market teams that receive a lot of money in revenue sharing have to be mindful of the requirement. But the A’s are in a unique spot where their revenue-sharing haul is growing because they have a new planned stadium in Las Vegas. In 2025, the A’s will collect 100 percent of their revenue-sharing allotment for the first time in years.
Because the A’s were able to get a stadium deal before the clock ran down on their temporary revenue-sharing allotment, via the current collective bargaining agreement, they will now receive a 100 percent share this upcoming season, instead of the partial one they’d been receiving. Since they have to spend 1.5 times their local revenue sharing rate on the team’s payroll, and what 1.5 times local revenue looks like is taking a jump, the A’s absolutely had to start adding players to avoid a grievance. Or, more accurately, to avoid another grievance — the Players Association has filed multiple grievances against the A’s, as well as the Pirates, Rays, and Marlins, for their failure to spend revenue-sharing dollars as they’re supposed to.
As Drellich also points out, these grievances can becoming bargaining leverage, rather than ever actually end up in front of an arbitrator. So, with CBA talks resuming between the two sides in 2026, giving the PA any free ammo to work with would be frowned upon by the other owners, and end up being a potential issue in bargaining for them.
It’s important to remember this, when considering any “changes” in the A’s behavior as far as player acquisition and spending goes. This isn’t the dawn of a new era, so much as it’s the A’s receiving even more money from the other teams, and spending exactly as much of it as they have to in order to avoid getting themselves and any other owner in trouble. There isn’t more money in Sacramento or Las Vegas than there was in Oakland, there are just larger checks made out to them signed by the rest of the league, and John Fisher and Co. will still get plenty of theirs, so long as they remember to spend enough of said checks to avoid being threatened in the future.
Severino, as of this writing, makes up nearly one-third of the A’s payroll on his own: he’s making $20 million in 2025, and the next-highest paid player is Jeffrey Springs, whom the A’s acquired in a trade with the Rays, at $10.5 million. They’re the lone guaranteed contracts on the roster, with everyone else pre-arbitration or in the middle of their arb years, leaving the projected payroll of the club at all of $59 million. Which, by the way, is $2 million lower than their 2024 Opening Day payroll. Are the A’s different, or are they just avoiding falling behind? They’ve still got money to spend before they even get to the point where the PA can’t file a grievance they’d surely win, if they pressed the issue, and that’s with Severino and Springs attached — the $30.5 million they’re set to receive in 2024 essentially just makes up for the 2024 money paid to free agents Ross Stripling ($12 million), Alex Wood ($8.5 million), and Aledmys Díaz ($8 million).
The thing about low expectations is that it becomes very easy to be impressed by, and distort the meaning of, even a smallest bit of hope or potential change. The A’s remain the A’s, though, and until they add far, far more players then they have, for far more money than they have, that’s going to be the case. As is, they’ve still got plenty of money to spend before they can even reasonably get the PA off of their backs. So maybe hold off on the “new direction” praise for a while.
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