Oakland Athletics fans bristle over report that team being outdrawn by most Triple-A squads: "It’s not about the fans" "Skinflint recluse of an owner"

Cleveland Guardians v Oakland Athletics
Trevor May of the Oakland Athletics pitches in front of a sea of empty seats against the Cleveland Guardians.

Matters are quickly going from bad to worse for the Oakland Athletics. With the team once again trading off any player approaching stardom, Oakland opened the 2023 season with the lowest payroll in MLB by a wide margin at just a hair over $43 million – nearly $120 million lower than the league average.

The Athletics opened the 2023 season with a six-game home stand that showed just how much in revolt that their fanbase is. On opening day, a 2-1 win over the Los Angeles Angels, drew just 14,638 to the decrepit RingCentral Coliseum, and attendance has plummeted from there.

On Tuesday night, the announced attendance for a 4-3 win over the visiting Cleveland Guardians was just 3,407. That attendance figure was eclipsed by 11 of the 13 Triple-A ballclubs to play on the day, with four of those clubs more than doubling the Athletics' paid attendance figure.

Oakland fans are used to the penny-pinching ways of former owners Steve Schott and Lewis Wolff, but even with that, the Athletics were able to field competitive teams more often than not. However, when the team was sold to current owner John Fischer in 2016, it did not take long for the once-proud franchise to descend into moppishness.

Not helping matters is that the team still plays in a decaying stadium. RingCentral Coliseum was built in 1966 as a home for both the Oakland Athletics and Oakland Raiders. The Raiders moved to Los Angeles in 1982, but returned to Oakland in 1994 after a massive outfield addition referred to as "Mount Davis" in scornful reference to former Raiders owner Al Davis.

In 2020, the Raiders moved to Las Vegas, leaving the crumbling Coliseum – including the haphazard stadium addition – behind for the Athletics.

MLB and the team has been looking to move to a new stadium in the Oakland area for the better part of this century, all to no avail.

The grudge match between Fischer and the Athletics fanbase continues to drag on, as both the on-field talent and the off-field attendance have reached new lows. Oakland has never been one of the highest-attended major league markets, with turnstiles usually counting off season attendance totals around 1.5 million.

However, an 81-game average of 3,400 fans comes to a grand total of 275,400 for the season – a figure the Athletics last saw in the mid-1930s, when the team was based in Philadelphia.

In February, the Associated Press reported MLB commissioner Rob Manfred saying that Fischer is now focused on moving the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas. The team's lease in Oakland expires after the 2024 season.

Oakland Athletics managing to win a few games so far

Tony Kemp of the Oakland Athletics, high fives Ryan Noda, right, after a win vs. the Cleveland Guardians.
Tony Kemp of the Oakland Athletics, high fives Ryan Noda, right, after a win vs. the Cleveland Guardians.

The Oakland Athletics may feature a roster full of low-paid "nobodys," but the team has managed to stay competitive in the majority of its first six home games. However, very few people have managed to notice.

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Edited by Joseph Schiefelbein