Baseball insider reveals MLB owners' thoughts on Oakland A's relocation

Baseball insider Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic appeared in the latest episode of Tim Kawakami's podcast for the same outlet and discussed multiple topics, including the prospective relocation of the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas.

Tristi Rodriguez of NBCS Bay Area transcribed most of what he had to say and reported it in a column of her own. Here are the main quotes and takeaways from Rosenthal's interview, as transcribed by Rodriguez.

Asked about the opinion of other MLB owners about the potential relocation of the A's from Oakland to Las Vegas, Rosenthal said that it "depends on who you talk to."

According to the information he's obtained, Rosenthal said that "different clubs, different owners have different perspectives." The insider added that some "large-market clubs" are "not happy with this, not happy that they’re still going to be on the revenue-sharing lamb, not happy that they’re vacating the sixth-largest market, not happy with the way the team has been run with revenue-sharing dollars in the last year."

Of course, there is one simple question to answer when those owners are faced with the decision of having to vote in favor or against the ultimate relocation. To that, Rosenthal said that even though he got those "promising" answers that would lead one to believe they'd prefer the A's to stay in Oakland, "we’ll see how vocal they are when the vote is taken."

"I suspect they’ll all fall in line as they always do, but maybe not," Rosenthal conceded. "This is something to watch."

Rosenthal said that most MLB owners "just want to see this resolved" and move on to other things. That might have to do with the pending relocation of another franchise, the Tampa Bay Rays, and the expected expansion of the MLB into a 32-team league. "[Owners] know if you get this resolved, you get Tampa Bay resolved, then baseball expands by two teams, who knows, maybe even back to Oakland. And the expansion fees come in and everybody’s happy."

The reporter confirmed that from what owners told him, the consensus thought is that Manfred's reasoning to favor the move of the A's out of Oakland, is the oft-mentioned "we tried, [but] we couldn’t get it done in Oakland." Debatable at best...

Rosenthal closed his appearance on the podcast with a not-so-promising note for fans of the A's residing in the Bay Area and still hoping for their team to stay put in Oakland. "I think that the real question is, what is it that Oakland was prepared to do? There is no Oakland offer, OK? They never got to a point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site. The community has to provide support and you know, at some point, you come to the realization, it’s just not going to happen."

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