Many people will have to move from Oakland to Sacramento to Las Vegas if they want to keep their jobs with the A’s. Dave Kaval, the architect of the measure, will not be one of them.
The president of the Atlético team announced on friday that he is resigning from his position to “pursue new business opportunities in California.” His last day will be Tuesday. Sandy Dean, a business partner of A’s owner John Fisher and a member of the team’s ownership group, will take over as interim president.
From the MLB site:
“We are grateful for Dave’s contributions and leadership over the past eight years. “He guided our organization through a period of significant transition and we sincerely thank him for his unwavering commitment to the team,” said A’s owner John Fisher. “As we look to the next chapter of our franchise, the team will continue to grow under new leadership, propelling the organization to success during our intervening years in West Sacramento and our new home in Las Vegas.”
Kaval will leave the A’s after an eight-year tenure in which they went from being regularly competitive, making the MLB playoffs from 2018 to 2020, to being among the worst teams in MLB. More disturbing to fans, however, was Kaval’s role in the team’s business operations, specifically how the club handled the search for a new stadium, first in Oakland and then in Las Vegas, under his leadership.
Throughout the process that saw the A’s finally emerge from the stage, Kaval positioned himself as one of the faces of the movement, alongside Fisher. That included when he proudly promoted the soon-to-be tongue-in-cheek team motto “Rooted in Oakland” and when the team began talking quietly to Las Vegas as negotiations with the city of Oakland stalled.
Kaval unveiled plans for a new, state-of-the-art stadium at Howard Terminal in Oakland. Factors such as public money offered to help build it were apparently lacking enough that Fisher finally decided to turn his team into the Las Vegas Athletics, with Fisher pledging more than a billion dollars for a new stadium.
The team has not yet broken ground on the selected stadium at the former location of the Tropicana casino in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, the A’s will play at least the next three seasons in Sacramento, in the home of the minor league Sacramento River Cats. The situation is awkward at best for the A’s and an absolute embarrassment for MLB. That’s how bad things got under Kaval.
In an interview with the athleticKaval’s interim replacement suggested that the project was a major reason for his resignation:
Dean suggested that Kaval decided to leave now because many of the important planning steps needed to move the Athletics to Las Vegas have been completed, including a land deal to locate a stadium on the Las Vegas Strip and securing government funding for part of it. of the project. .
“I think the decision to resign,” Dean told The Athletic, “was tied to the amount of progress that was made here.”
The A’s reportedly plan to hire Kaval’s full-time replacement in 2025. Whoever it is, he clearly won’t be afraid of a headache.