By admin 
There was internal excitement about the Athletics heading into 2026 for the second season of their temporary stay in West Sacramento.
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They had the reigning American League Rookie of the Year and runner-up in their lineup. They had a year under their belts playing in a minor league ballpark — and an offseason to equip the roster for one of baseball’s most hitter-friendly environments. They had a projected batting order loaded with talented hitters ready to take the next step.
On paper, it looked like manager Mark Kotsay’s club was ready to break its five-year playoff drought, the A’s longest in a decade and a half. The organization even told season ticket-holders Sutter Health Park would be able to host postseason games should the team qualify.
But that’s not what happened. The A’s were eliminated from postseason contention weeks before their season finale Sunday afternoon against the Houston Astros (12:05 p.m. first pitch). The only late-season silver lining in their final few games: having an opportunity to play spoiler against teams fighting for playoff positioning. An A’s win Sunday coupled with a Texas Rangers loss to the Minnesota Twins would keep the Astros out of the playoffs.
The A’s (64-97) entered the final weekend of the season having already clinched their worst record of the last three years despite having the highest expectations of those three seasons coming in. And they came into the season’s final day with Major League Baseball’s worst run differential, having given up 229 more runs than they’ve scored.
“These types of seasons,” Kotsay said Thursday, “you might learn more than the successful ones. So really, going into the offseason, try to reflect on those things that we can make adjustments with because that’s what we have to do. We have to make adjustments. We have to be better in certain areas individually and collectively.”
Those adjustments will be decisions made at the very top of the organization. The A’s in August moved on from general manager David Forst before his 11th season in the role and 26th with the franchise concluded in a move the team said was “mutually” agreed to. That came after firing long-time pitching coach Scott Emerson, as the team predictably struggled to prevent runs at Sutter Health Park.
The team made assistant GM Dan Feinstein the interim replacement for Forst while giving Kotsay more responsibilities in light of Forst’s departure. Which means it’s likely there will be a new general manager installed this offseason who might want to hire a new manager despite Kotsay signing a contract extension through 2028 with a club option for 2029 before last season.
Kotsay indicated he doesn’t know what’s to come this offseason, including whether he’ll be back as manager in 2027.
“(I’ve gotten) no assurances in terms of what the future holds for the organization,” Kotsay said. “Obviously the word I use right now is, there’s change. I talk about change a lot. And I think change can be good. Obviously it can be challenging to go through, but at the same time, you may come out on the other side — a lot of times there’s more success to be had.”
Kotsay was hired to replace Bob Melvin in 2022 and has had losing seasons in all five years, while the A’s have been in a long-term rebuilding and transitional phase as they relocated from Oakland to West Sacramento. The contract extension was designed to have him oversee the planned 2028 move to Las Vegas, where the team hoped to be more competitive with a more robust payroll.
If there’s a big picture takeaway from 2026, it’s that that plan could be in jeopardy after Forst was the first domino to fall.
“I think the timelines are still not solidified in terms of who will be leading the organization,” Kotsay said. “But once that person is in place, there are a lot of relationships that we’ll start building and having conversations.”
What were the A’s issues? Where to begin…
The Triple-A bandbox called Sutter Health Park, home to the San Francisco Giants affiliate Sacramento River Cats, had unpredictable winds and high temperatures, which aided hitters more than any other ballpark in MLB including Coors Field in Denver, according to Baseball Savant.
The A’s entered the final weekend with the worst team earned run average in the American League (5.44), the most home runs allowed in baseball (239, nine clear of the second-worst Chicago Cubs), fourth-most walks (619), and dead last in FIP, a metric measuring pitchers’ effectiveness preventing home runs, walks and hit-by-pitches and while producing strikeouts.
Some pitchers — including the team’s ace Luis Severino — have complained about the condition of the mound, which requires constant upkeep given the A’s and River Cats have played some 150 combined games at Sutter Health Park each of the last two years.
Offensively, the A’s bats might have been overpowering enough at their home park to combat their pitching issues. But the team’s best player, Nick Kurtz, appeared in just 99 games after suffering a right thumb strain. Shortstop Jacob Wilson had surgery to repair a left shoulder injury and played 80. Brent Rooker was available for 48 before having knee surgery. Tyler Soderstrom played 109 due to a hip impingement. Shea Langeliers returned from a knee injury but played in only 103 games ahead of this weekend.
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Suffice to say, the team’s top-five position players in wins above replacement (WAR) last season combined to miss more than 370 games. That’s not including Severino, who only made 12 starts before going on the injured list
“I think this year, summed up, has been crazy with all the stuff we’ve had to deal with,” Langeliers said.
Are there any bright spots?
The silver lining heading into 2027? All those players are expected to be back in attempt to win an AL West that was hardly a murderers’ row in 2026. The law of averages would suggest the A’s have better injury luck.
Meanwhile, the two contenders for the division this year, the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros, came into Sunday at 80-81, guaranteeing the AL West winner will finish either .500 or with a losing record.
Additionally, the A’s saw some of their young players finish the season strong. Outfielder Henry Bolte had a .760 on-base plus slugging percentage entering the final weekend, with 11 home runs and a team-leading 21 stolen bases.
Versatile infielder Zack Gelof bounced back from an injury-ravaged season in 2025 in a major way, with 22 home runs as of Friday and 16 stolen bases. Middle infielder Joshua Kuroda-Grauer filled in a small sample size posted a .936 OPS and looks like a long-term option while overcoming one of the most seemingly painful injuries a player could have (a ruptured testicle).
The A’s did see a noticeable uptick in attendance during their second season, which came after making a clear effort to connect with the Sacramento community after getting feedback from their first season. They entered closing weekend with 14 reported sellouts at Sutter Health Park this year after tallying just seven in 2025.
All of this season’s sellouts came before the Fourth of July, around the time the season went off the rails due to all the injuries and poor play.
The A’s went 13-39 in July and August.
Will A’s play in 2027? MLB lockout possibility looms
There’s an outside chance that Sunday’s finale against Houston could be the last game the A’s play in West Sacramento.
That would be the worst-case outcome from the ongoing negotiations between MLB owners and the Major League Baseball Players Association as they hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement. The current CBA expires Dec. 1 while many insiders believe it could be the most contentious standoff since 1994, when the entire season was lost due to players going on strike. Which could put 2027 season in jeopardy ahead of the A’s expected opening of their new stadium on the Las Vegas strip in 2028.
What’s more likely is missed time and the sides coming together for an abbreviated season, which happened when there was a lockout leading into the 2022 season. Spring training was delayed but owners and players worked to get in a full 162-game season.
The key issues for the upcoming CBA include the owners pushing for a salary cap to combat the Los Angeles Dodgers’ winning back-to-back World Series while spending roughly $380.5 million on payroll this season, while MLB teams on average spend $182 million (the A’s had baseball’s fourth-lowest payroll at $97.5 million in 2026).
The players have said a salary cap is a non-starter, while they are pushing for minimum salary increases and eased restrictions on luxury taxes, allowing teams to spend more with less penalty.
But if labor talks do reach an impasse, the possibility that there is no 2027 MLB season combined with the franchise’s planned 2028 relocation could result in Sunday’s contest representing the final A’s game ever played in West Sacramento.
And, if local stakeholders’ bid unveiled earlier this year to land an expansion franchise fall short, that could also make it the last MLB game ever played in the Sacramento region.
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