Oakland Athletics continue to let fans down with another lost season

It is still the first week of the season and already it is clear the Oakland Athletics are in for yet another long season. A team that one time prided itself on building competitive teams for next to nothing continues to build the roster for next to nothing while losing the ability to compete.

Being an Athletics fan has become far too painful for management and a team that clearly no longer cares about even pretending to attempt to win games. The Athletics are in last place in payroll, spending only $43 million this season on the entire roster.

For context, the league average is $148 million, with even teams like the Detroit Tigers and Arizona Diamondbacks with low expectations eclipsing $100 million. Being an Athletics fan is an exercise in misery for a team that clearly never has already given up on the 2023 season punting away another year in search of what?

Oakland had two building blocks in Sean Murphy and Matt Olson, opting for each of the past two seasons to ship the players to Atlanta in exchange for prospects. Prospects we already know Oakland will be unwilling to pay even if the team is lucky enough to find production from trading away franchise players.

The Oakland Athletics are rebuilding yet again

Rebuilding is painful but necessary if Oakland was stripping the team down to build it back again as many franchises have done successfully their approach would make a level of sense. However, it is beyond clear this isn’t the case and that Oakland needs new leadership and perhaps even a new location to change the perspective of a team that is fielding close to a minor league roster.

Only three seasons ago, Oakland was a playoff contender and had clear building blocks that would have kept the team in contention long-term. Rather than pay their stars, however, the team traded any player with value opting to bring in stop gaps without a clear plan moving forward.

When your star additions of the offseason are Jace Peterson and Trevor May, you’re doing something wrong.

This is in no way meant to slight the effort or careers of the players on the current roster, but rather to point out the franchise is doing a disservice to what talent they do have refusing to bring in veterans or pay for much-needed upgrades.

What makes Oakland so maddening isn’t the refusal to pay top free agents or the wish to save money at every possible corner. It is the lack of awareness that to win games in this league. You cannot consistently trade your franchise players and expect to ever win anything, even if the trades fall your way.

The Atlanta Braves are the latest example of a team that has both lost star players (Dansby Swanson and Freddie Freeman), but has locked up the majority of their talent long-term after a painful rebuild. Atlanta is focused on not only retaining players like Ronald Acuña Jr. and Ozzie Albies, but the young starters that helped the team to a championship opting to save money by paying them early.

If Oakland were to adopt this approach after the 2019 season, how much better could this team be for a slightly upgraded cost?

Clearly, this league is a business … and Oakland is telling its fans an emphasis on winning isn’t a part of that business. Something that has fans leaving the ballpark without a reason to return and pushing interest in Oakland at an all-time low.

Until the attitude of the front office and ownership changes, this will continue to be the case for the only team in baseball that already has zero hope in the 2023 season.