Over at The Athletic this week, they released an anonymous player poll, and the A’s were not shown in a positive light. In the first question, “Which manager, aside from your own, would you not want to play for?” Mark Kotsay received a pair of votes. Without follow-up questions, it’s tough to tell if this is an indictment on him as a manager, or the team’s performance the past few seasons.
It should also be noted that two players said they didn’t want to play for Dave Roberts, whose team just won the World Series, so who knows what players are after. For what it’s worth, one player said to “just put the Cardinals guy” just so he’d have an answer, so maybe there wasn’t a ton of thought behind this one overall.
The real back breaker for the A’s here is the question about team’s reputations. Of the 115 players that mentioned teams that have a bad reputation among the players, the A’s received the most votes, with 39. Unsurpisingly, the White Sox (31), Rockies (25), Marlins (25), and Pirates (24) were the other highest vote getters.
Essentially, the teams that have been bad recently.
What makes the A’s stick out for players is possibly the fact that they’re playing in a minor-league park, and they don’t have the best reputation for spending money to improve the product on the field. Being “cheap” and playing in Sacramento were two cited reasons that players chose the A’s.
Now, it would be interesting to see if player’s opinions would change if they started to play competitive baseball during their stay in Sacramento. Say the A’s were a 90-win ballclub. Would a pretty good chance at making the postseason be enough to make some of them change their minds? If so, what if they were the missing piece that made the A’s a 90-win club? Could they be swayed then?
These anonymous polls are fun and give some insight into a player’s thought process, and we’re drawn to the big numbers that seem to form a consensus around a question. But what would also be interesting is finding one player that would love to play for the A’s in Sacramento and seeing why that is. That’s almost more interesting.
Of course, if given the choice, a Major League Baseball player would not choose to play in a minor league park. That’s not terribly surprising. What makes this game interesting isn’t that we know what to expect, but rather, the unpredictability of the game. The outliers.
Perhaps someone like Jason Alexander, who has been on the cusp of the big leagues and grew up in Windsor, California, relished his time pitching so close to where he grew up–as a big-leaguer. Those would be the more intriguing responses for the real sickos.
Next. One Way For the A’s to Connect with the City of Sacramento. One Way For the A’s to Connect with the City of Sacramento. dark
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