Athletics GM bullish on playing in same city as Aviators

If the Oakland Athletics’ plan goes as they hope and a $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat ballpark is built on the northwest corner of Tropicana Avenue and Dean Martin Drive, they would be located 11 miles from their Triple-A affiliate, the Aviators, and their home, Las Vegas Ballpark.

A’s president Dave Kaval said last week the franchise plans to keep the Aviators in Las Vegas should the Athletics relocate to Southern Nevada.

Although it’s not common in the MLB, outside of the Atlanta Braves, Houston Astros, Seattle Mariners and Minnesota Twins, A’s general manager David Forst said having a club’s Triple-A and major league teams in the same market makes a lot of sense.

“It would be great from a baseball operations standpoint,” Forst said. “It has a lot of advantages, obviously in terms of getting players back and forth. It makes it easy for our front office to go see the Triple-A team and evaluate on a consistent basis.”

Such an arrangement would allow the major league staff to visit and work with Triple-A players more frequently, which hasn’t been possible during MLB seasons in Oakland, Forst said.

Being so close also would help the major league and minor league staffs have a better working relationship, similar to what the A’s have with their Low-A Stockton Ports.

“We have Stockton, which is about a 90-minute drive, and even being that close it helps with minor league instructors being able to go to both places on the same trip to create that synergy between the major league staff and player development,” Forst said.

“There are a lot of things that you could accomplish in that situation that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do.”

There is also the possibility that the A’s and Aviators share Las Vegas Ballpark, with the MLB club’s lease running out at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum at the conclusion of the 2024 season. Kaval noted the A’s have the option to play at Las Vegas Ballpark for the 2025 and 2026 MLB seasons, with their potential MLB stadium planned to be ready for the 2027 season.

A temporary sharing of Las Vegas Ballpark by the two teams is something that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred believes would work.

“I think scheduling-wise, it could be done,” Manfred said last week during a meeting with members of The Associated Press Sports Editors.

If that were to occur, Aviators president Don Logan said last week he had staff working on getting an estimate to convert the natural grass field at Las Vegas Ballpark to artificial turf. With a combined 182 home games possible between the A’s and Aviators, natural grass would not hold up for an entire season, Logan noted.

With advancements in turf technology, Forst isn’t concerned about temporarily playing on artificial turf in an open-air stadium in the summertime heat in Las Vegas.

“I do think we’ve come a long way from AstroTurf,” Forst said. “There’s a lot of places where the technology works out well. There’s college ballparks now in more places that have turf. So, that doesn’t really concern me. We’re not talking 30 years ago when we saw places that were 130 degrees on the turf. The technology is beyond that now.”

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.