So the Oakland As are sold. Does that mean they’ll become the San Francisco Athletics of Oakland?
More seriously, former owner Steve Schott seems to have liked to keep Oakland lean, and continued insisting on the small market nature of the As. He thought it brought out the creativity in Beane or something. Or as Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle put it:
Schott, we know, is a profoundly energetic, even Yorkian, money-minder. He has maintained the laughable fiction that he and Ken Hofmann bought the A’s for $85 million, a figure which is at least a third too high, and that they just barely scrape by every year, which is monumentally false. They do swell, year in and year out. (Link)
So now, with a new owner, Billy Beane might have a bit more to play with. Although some people think that Beane works best when forced with constraints - see Tyler Belszinski’s comment that the financial constraints will stay here - the idea of Oakland with more money is scary to me.
Of course, Beane’s contract is void if Schott sells the team or moves from Oakland.
Tangential link: Fast Company on “How to Play Beane Ball”