This is What the A's Have Money For???

 

John Fisher will never make sense to anyone. His actions seem to run in conflict to the team he willingly bought and has owned for two decades. He is the Jeremy Renner of sports management, because despite the amount of time he has put into this, and the amount of high profile projects he has taken on, never in any of this has he actually looked like he's wanted to be here, doing this. 

Over the last two seasons he completely shattered the goodwill of the remainder of the fanbase the A's still had, pissed off the Oakland massive by moving the team to Las Vegas years after these same people had to deal with the Raiders leaving, balked at so many stadium proposals that now the Vegas ones are in jeopardy, and figured out a cost-effective method to play games in Sacramento, way hotter than in Oakland, in a lower-capacity minor league park. The man clearly does not want to spend money on the Athletics. This seems to be Fisher's least favorite thing in the world. At any point he could sell the team, but he doesn't want to do that.

So it's baffling to me that after the last two years, where his refusal to put money into bettering the team has alienated the fans, the rest of the league, the players and all of baseball, and heading into a season where the object will be to conserve as much money as possible for fear of becoming TOO good in Sacramento...John Fisher has now put money into a top starting pitcher for the next three years. 

Let me just...real quick, run through some players that were really good in Oakland that Fisher did not have the funds to pay to stick around. Uh, let's see here, Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, Josh Donaldson, Sonny Gray, Sean Manaea, Chris Bassitt, Liam Hendriks, Sean Murphy, Josh Reddick, Paul Blackburn, Starling Marte, Mark Canha, Jon Lester, Marcus Semien. All of those guys were deemed unfit for extensions or new contracts. And to recap, who are the A's signing for the next three years?

Luis Severino. Based solely off his consistent 2024 with the Mets. 

Now, to be fair, apparently the A's have been more active in free agency than in past years, mostly because they want to ensure that the residents of Sacramento have some players they recognize at the park this year. It's hard for a team like the A's to be a draw on the back of Brent Rooker and J.P. Sears alone, they need some proven star power. But many free agents, Walker Buehler chiefmost among them, have expressed reluctance towards pitching in a minor league park all season. So, rightfully, the A's haven't seemed to be getting that many nibbles so far. Yet here we are, Luis Severino will be an Athletic for the next 3 years.

The thing about that, though, and...I hate to say this because Sevvy's upswings with New York were terrific, and his 2017 season was wonderful, but...Luis Severino had this period from 2019 til 2023 with the Yankees where he couldn't put together a consistent, healthy season. The majority of his peak years spent, with one decent enough campaign in 2022 married by injury, and a truly atrocious one in 2023. I have seen what Severino is capable of, and the highs are quite high, but I don't know how often he can perform that well anymore. Either you're paying for a Zack Wheeler, who needed to get that out of his system, or a Madison Bumgarner, who doesn't have a ton left to show for himself. And the A's banking on a risk like Sevvy for 3 years does feel like Fisher wanting to play with the big boys without actually knowing how they make their decisions. 

I could be wrong, absolutely. Sevvy could be brilliant for the A's. But this just feels like Fisher trying to make up for lost time and recoup goodwill when it's far too late for either of those things.