Oakland A's News: Ramon Laureano to IL, San Jose wants MLB team, Giants and A's partnership?

Oakland A's send Ramon Laureano to Injured List; Conner Capel recalled

The A's sent Ramon Laureano to the 10-day injured list on Friday with the move being retroactive to Thursday, June 22. Laureano enters the IL with a fractured hand after suffering his injury in a game against Milwaukee Brewers prior to the Reverse Boycott series against the Tampa Bay Rays, when it was first believed he suffered the injury.

According to Martin Gallegos of MLB.com, Laureano's injury was caused by a pitch thrown into his left hand in a game against the Brew Crew earlier in June, contrary to the initial reports talking about Laureano getting to the IL because of a right-hand injury.

To fill the hole created by Laureano's upcoming absence (expected to be longer than just a week), the A's instantly recalled outfielder Conner Capel from Triple-A Las Vegas. Capel was thrown straight into Friday's lineup for the first game of the series against the Toronto Blue Jays away from Oakland.

Capel, who had already played for the A's major club earlier this season before getting demoted to Las Vegas to get his game right, ended up scoring a run on Friday's 5-4 victory and finished his first game back in the MLB with a hit on three at-bats as the last hitter in the lineup while manning the left field on defense.

The outfielder is slashing .261/.354/.333 this season with the A's in the majors having appeared in 27 games loggin 79 plate apps.

San Jose mayor wants MLB expension team, calls for removal of territorial rights

We don't really know who will end up as the biggest winner of the inevitable move of the Oakland A's to Las Vegas, but everybody is trying to take advantage of the situation, no matter their relation to the organization.

The last figure to enter the picture is San Jose's mayor Matt Mahan. Mahan has called out MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, according to a letter obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, with the outlet revealing its contents on Friday.

John Shea, in his SF Chronicle article, dates the letter obtained by the newspaper on June 15 and writes that it "makes a case for San Jose as a legitimate site for a future MLB team."

Digging deeper, Shea highlights some other content included in the letter, one in which the mayor of San Jose is "urging Major League Baseball to suspend territorial rights to the South Bay and pave the way for an expansion team in San Jose."

Those claims arrive from a very reasonable standpoint, mind you. As Shea explains in his report, the SF Giants were "granted territorial rights to Santa Clara County in 1990" and that has stayed the same ever since. In turn, no other city from the area can acquire and establish a baseball franchise of its own.

The mayor of San Jose, though, made the case for his city in his letter writing that "San Jose and Silicon Valley present a unique market opportunity for an expansion MLB team or existing club." That club, of course, could be the Oakland A's if they backtrack on their move to Las Vegas and decide to stay put in the Bay Area.

Mayor Mahan also wrote that "San Jose and the South Bay present any team owner with an extraordinary opportunity to secure branding sponsorships from companies forming the highest concentration of leading tech employers on the planet," offering the high-tech vibes of the area as the main appeal for whoever wants to come to them and invest in the zone by building and establishing a major league franchise in it.

Shea pointed out that the letter also included a section in which it's made clear that "in baseball’s other two-team markets--New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles-Anaheim--the territory is shared," adding that "only in the Bay Area is the question of territory divided by counties."

It might be too late for Mayor Mahan if his idea was to try and snatch the A's from Oakland instead of watching them move away from the Bay, but this action surely will get some eyeballs to it and perhaps gain some traction with the MLB willing to expand in the next few years and potentially handing a new team to the city of San Jose.

A's fans want to team-up with SF Giants to organize a Bay Area Boycott in San Francisco

I was scrolling down Twitter yesterday when I stumbled upon a tweet by the Last Dive Bar folks that caught my attention if only because of the swift design it featured. Peep.

Yeah, that's two baseball players shaking their right hands, which is great, but not so great when it comes to two players from the A's and the Giants considering their long-tenured and heated rivalry.

That said, sometimes you just have to go with the flow and join forces against the greater enemy, in this case, the MLB and more precisely commissioner Rob Manfred.

After stagging a world-renowned event on June 13 that came to be known as the "Reverse Boycott" and that produced a t-shirt that is headed to the Baseball Hall of Fame, fans from the A's and the Giants are already planning a second boycott in order to amplify their voices in a last-effort attempt to keep the Athletics in the Bay instead of losing them to Nevada and Las Vegas in particular.

The Oakland 68s are already planning everything and they have put out a similar tee to the one present at the Reverse Boycott game, only now in black but again emblazoned with the "SELL" word across the chest.

The plan is for the "boycott" to happen on July 25th at Oracle Park in San Francisco when A's and Giants will face each other in the first game of a two-match series between both teams.

We'll keep you updated on this, but even if this new gathering gets a boost in attendance approaching the one we saw at the Coli a few days ago, we're seriously looking at some 40,000+ or a possible sellout crowd in Frisco a few weeks from now. Make sure to grab a ticket and a tee if you're around and can attend the game!

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