When the Athletics announced that they would be leaving Oakland to play their home games in Sacramento for the 2025 through 2027 seasons—and maybe longer—it represented a clear downgrade for players.
A’s players, coaches and club personnel had to uproot their lives in the Bay Area to move 80-some miles inland to play at Sutter Health Park, a minor league facility that would still be hosting Triple-A Sacramento River Cats games when the A’s were on the road.
The River Cats are a Giants affiliate. They have played all their home games at Sutter Health this season, though they lost six home dates due to scheduling conflicts with the A’s.
While the Athletics in Sacramento situation created chaos, it also creates an ideal scenario to see how a Triple-A park would play when used as an MLB facility for an entire season.*
Would adding major league talent to a minor league park change the park’s character? How would the Athletics’ new home compare with the Oakland Coliseum, where they had played since moving to the West Coast in 1968.
Note: All data presented here is generated from home games only through Sunday, Sept. 7, counting the batting and pitching statistics at the venue. All “per game” references are figured per 76 plate appearances to provide a consistent definition of what constitutes a “game.”
Let’s address the most basic question: How does the run environment in home games look for the Athletics in Sacramento this season compared with how it looked at the Oakland Coliseum in 2024?
| Year | Venue | R/G | HR/G | OBP | SLG | OPS | ISO | BABIP | wOBA |
| 2025 | Sacramento (MLB) | 9.94 | 2.79 | .335 | .450 | .785 | .187 | .307 | .337 |
| 2024 | Oakland (MLB) | 8.67 | 1.93 | .312 | .383 | .695 | .142 | .291 | .302 |
Athletics home games in Sacramento this year feature more than one additional run per game, nearly one additional home run per game, as well as large spikes in OPS (90 points), isolated slugging (45 points), BABIP (16 points) and wOBA (35 points) compared with A’s home games last year in Oakland.
In other words, the difference in home park status is dramatic for A’s players and visiting players accustomed to the Oakland Coliseum.
These trends hold whether viewing the Coliseum in 2024 alone or as part of a three-year sample from 2022 to 2024 shown below.
| Year | Venue | R/G | HR/G | OBP | SLG | OPS | ISO | BABIP | wOBA |
| 2022-24 | Oakland (MLB) | 8.54 | 1.94 | .311 | .382 | .693 | .146 | .284 | .302 |
The three-year Coliseum rates are consistent with the standalone 2024 data. The rate of runs scored and home runs are…