Clorox CEO talks about keeping the A's in Oakland (San Francisco: move, pool)

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by krudmonk

A successful team in Oakland does disrupt the Giants. They've been forcing the A's into that corner, 8 miles across the bay instead of 50 miles down the road, because the Giants do not think it's viable. Do I need to link that article in which Piccinini stated that the Giants torpedoed his efforts to buy the team and keep it in Oakland?

Yes, but now it looks like Howard Terminal is back in serious play.

And luckily for us, the Giants, who would love nothing more for the A's to leave Nor Cal once and for all, but right now they would rather torpedo any chance of losing their cash cow Santa Clara county, then concern themselves at this point with anything occurring here.

So our alliance-that-really-isnt with the Giants, is one of pure convnience.

But if that gives us time to get our act together, AND stop Lew Wolff from moving the team to San Jose, then I welcome it.

[Stephen1110]

Originally Posted by crescent22

1. Howard Terminal is a joke - tanker oil everywhere, no money, no public transit, beautiful views of the Nimitz, in a city with no jobs and no money.

2.Instead of asking Knauss about Howard Terminal, ask him why he moved 500 jobs from downtown Oakland to Siberia/Pleasanton last year.

1. Lol

2. Listen to the interview

[llowllevellowll]

Originally Posted by crescent22

> I personally think you're overrating how much you think the San Jose market would mean to an A's franchise when they still show allegiance to San Francisco. How many Oakland/East Bay fans would still support them? A decent amount, sure, maybe even the majority, but you'd see a lot of drop off.

The tradeoff would be the same- Silicon Valley fans would move to the A's over time. People will root for the team near them. It's not like the DC area stayed following the Orioles closely after the Expos moved in.

The upshot is the corporate money in Silicon Valley, a gold mine for sponsorship and boxes, which is nothing more than tumbleweed in Oakland.

Your naivete is what hurts you in this conversation. I don't know where you got the idea that Wolff cares about the A's franchise. His motives have very little to do with bettering an A's franchise as it is lining his personal investments. An A's franchise run by Wolff and Fisher in Oakland or San Jose is an A's franchise that's being mismanaged and run into the ground. They're not baseball guys and they don't make good baseball decisions. What makes you think that all of a sudden, Wolff is a guy to be reckoned with? The same guy that artificially and intentionally limits capacity and attendance to make his thesis more agreeable is assumed by you to be making the better baseball decision by moving the team. Why so much faith? Are you one of his long lost nephews or what?

[krudmonk]

Originally Posted by 18Montclair

Yes, but now it looks like Howard Terminal is back in serious play.

And luckily for us, the Giants, who would love nothing more for the A's to leave Nor Cal once and for all, but right now they would rather torpedo any chance of losing their cash cow Santa Clara county, then concern themselves at this point with anything occurring here.

So our alliance-that-really-isnt with the Giants, is one of pure convnience.

But if that gives us time to get our act together, AND stop Lew Wolff from moving the team to San Jose, then I welcome it.

Okay, I give you credit for at least acknowledging this. I've run into so many Oakland-only folks who view the Giants as some kind of saving grace (obviously just off the field).

Originally Posted by Parti Rhinocéros

Your naivete is what hurts you in this conversation. I don't know where you got the idea that Wolff cares about the A's franchise. His motives have very little to do with bettering an A's franchise as it is lining his personal investments. An A's franchise run by Wolff and Fisher in Oakland or San Jose is an A's franchise that's being mismanaged and run into the ground. They're not baseball guys and they don't make good baseball decisions. What makes you think that all of a sudden, Wolff is a guy to be reckoned with? The same guy that artificially and intentionally limits capacity and attendance to make his thesis more agreeable is assumed by you to be making the better baseball decision by moving the team. Why so much faith? Are you one of his long lost nephews or what?

I won't paint the guy as a saint, but the fact that he endures such abuse and yet still shows up to A's* games has to dispell a bit of the claim that he doesn't care about the team. Fisher is the guy who doesn't give one ****.

Also, Beane makes the baseball decisions. That is the general manager's role.

*and Quakes, but he is not hated there

[crescent22]

> An A's franchise run by Wolff and Fisher in Oakland or San Jose is an A's franchise that's being mismanaged and run into the ground. They're not baseball guys and they don't make good baseball decisions.

This is lame. I think the A's are run pretty well- they have a crap facility, have tried three times to get a stadium built in various places including Oakland and have had a severe limitation on revenues, but have been able to run a winning record over the last 25 years, including the contemporaneous time. Over time, Beane has probably had the best hit/miss record among all the lower-revenue teams in personnel moves.

You don't like Wolff because he wants to move the team from Oakland, not because he is a bad business man. Very few owners are baseball people; very few- certainly none of the people who have been managing general partners across the Bay.

Wolff's desire to create scarcity value by cutting off the third deck was sound, I think. Additionally, it wouldn't surprise me if one of the motivations was to limit the potential for sewage damage when you have 40,000 some crowds- when the extra 10,000 people in the 3rd deck are paying $5 each, it isn't worth the extra personnel costs to maintain.

Wolff is not an idiot - anyone in his position would have come to the same conclusion - San Jose is the money center - Oakland won't help with a stadium- he already tried at 66th St.- he owes Oakland nothing.

[sav858]

A bit unrelated to the stadium issue but I just read this pretty cool story about Brandon Moss:

"I love it here," he said. "I love everything about the organization, the coaching staff, my teammates, the city. It's the first time in my baseball career I'm in a place where it really feels like home."

How Brandon Moss really became a member of the Oakland A's - ContraCostaTimes.com

[crescent22]

Moss is one of the all-time great reclamation projects by Beane or any GM. He is the best form of enjoyment by a fan because he wasn't a prospect whom hard-core fans inject expectations into as they progress through the minors. He seemed to be an avg 1B castoff and boomed at Oakland for reasons I still don't understand, but thrilled to take it.

[llowllevellowll]

Originally Posted by Tall Cool One

With the A's record and player development over the past 15 years (balanced against their payroll) they are definitely not mismanaged. They play a competitive brand of baseball consistently and are entertaining. Their W-L record is proof of that.

That may be due to Billy Beane and his boys brilliance, but it pretty plain they are doing a good job within available resources.

There's many teams that would love to have their W-L record and playoff appearances.

I hate to agree with Crescent here, but hey, the A's bring it on the field consistently.

Whether that's due to ownership, or in spite of I'm not sure. And I doubt any of us really are.

I think you both misunderstand when I'm speaking of mismanaging the franchise. Lew Wolff has very little to do with the product on the field. There is nothing inherently unique to Lew Wolff or John Fisher when it comes to the product on the field. Billy Beane gets all the credit when he makes apt signings like Bartolo Colon and Yoenis Cespedes and excellent trades like Cahill in exchange for Parker and Cook. Billy Beane also gets the blame when he makes poor signings like a 1-year deal for Ben Sheets that backfired and again when he made a trade for Matt Holiday that saw the exodus of Carlos Gonzalez. These are the goings-on of general managers that happen to make a TEAM successful. The general manager has more of an effect on the franchises success than the ownership group has on the TEAM success, not nearly the same the other way around. It's not as if Wolff is doing anything to make the life of the GM easier.

Wolff, in mismanaging the franchise, has continued to stick this team in the same, worsening conditions that they were before him when the stadium was outdated. He tarped seats to keep attendance down even during the most recent playoff trips and during the recent seasons even during series' that would have brought in 45,000+ fans through the turnstiles.

Guys, it didn't used to be like this. The A's used to draw high 40s to low 50s for Yankees, Red Sox, and during the playoffs. In the 2012 playoffs, the ownership group REMOVED seats from the fans! And don't give me the balogna that tarping the upper deck seats was a good thing. 314, 315, and 316 could easily be expanded to include 3-4 sections on each side while still keeping them within the reigns of being good baseball seats. And to not do that during the playoffs? Those wouldn't be $5 dollar tickets. 314, 316 were either 18 or 24 per piece. There's no reason not to do what's right and he left revenue on the table and slapped the fans in the face.

How hasn't he slapped his own fans in the face is the real question. Before last season, you could have read every single banner clearly out in the right field bleachers. Remember the anti-Lew Wolff banners that he mandated be taken down? Wolff lied, he never tried?

How much better would the franchise be if Wolff had put aside his personal investments and gotten the deal done to make Victory Court a possibility? Even if it wasn't yet completed, the fact that he denied there was even a project to look at shows you how much he's interested or cares about getting the new stadium. He'll let the team root in the Coliseum - literally - unless he's able to go to SJ. That doesn't help the franchise.

[04kL4nD]

Great post. Couldn't agree with you more.

[sav858]

They were going to remove the tarps for the ALCS last year they said. I'm still bitter about how we had "home field advantage" yet started on the road, fkn BS.