The Alameda County board of supervisors voted (by a 4-1 margin) Tuesday to join the Athletics and the city of Oakland in the team’s attempts to construct a new ballpark at the Howard Terminal site in Oakland. The county’s agreement is non-binding, and as Annie Sciacca of The Bay Area News Group explains, many steps remain before construction can or would actually begin on a new A’s stadium, or how financing for the development project would break down between the county, city, and the team. Still, “I think our willingness to at least go further based on the motion gives the county the opportunity to do more due diligence around this,” supervisor Nate Miley said.
More from around the American League…
- Carlos Santana will require 4-6 weeks of recovery time after receiving a PRP injection to treat a quad strain, the Royals first baseman tells The Athletic’s Alec Lewis, which should give Santana plenty of time to be ready for Spring Training. Testing after the season revealed that Santana had a Grade 2 quad strain, and Santana said he’d been playing on the injury for the season’s final six weeks, since he hurt himself trying to beat out a grounder in a game on August 23. Even prior to the quad injury, Santana’s performance was already tailing off badly, and the veteran slugger’s first season in K.C. resulted in a career-worst .214/.319/.342 slash line over 659 plate appearances. Santana is set to earn $10.5MM in 2022, the final season of the two-year, $17.5MM free agent pact he signed with the Royals last winter.
- November 19 is the deadline for teams to set their 40-man rosters in advance of the Rule 5 Draft, and the Orioles are one of several clubs facing some tough decisions about how to protect and who to expose. Rich Dubroff of BaltimoreBaseball.com believes that since the O’s have something of a surplus of infield prospects, any excess infielders (such as Adam Hall or Cadyn Grenier) could be more likely to be left off the 40-man.
- The Yankees’ huge arbitration class includes Gary Sanchez (projected to make $7.9MM in 2022) and Luke Voit ($5.4MM), who each somewhat fell out of favor in the Bronx. The catching market is thin enough that The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler doesn’t think the Yankees would non-tender Sanchez, yet cutting ties with Voit isn’t out of the question, as New York is looking to make its roster more athletic and versatile. One would expect the Yankees to once again explore the trade market for Voit rather than just let him go for nothing, as while Voit’s 2021 production was down sharply from his 2018-20 numbers, he still managed above-average offense (109 OPS+, 111 wRC+) even while batting multiple injuries. That said, if an acceptable trade offer couldn’t be found, Voit wouldn’t be the only first base-only slugger to find himself non-tendered come arbitration time, as teams have trended away from somewhat one-dimensional players with limited defensive capability.