A’s Keep Shelling Out Cash With Payroll Grievance Looming

The historically cheap A’s continue to spend ahead of the club’s move to a minor league park in Sacramento.

Weeks after handing out a contract for Luis Severino that topped a 21-year-old franchise record, the A’s agreed to an extension with designated hitter Brent Rooker for five years and $60 million. The deal will pay Rooker $30 million over the first three seasons and includes a sixth-year vesting option for $22 million that can escalate it by another $10 million.  

The deal is the latest big check cut by a team that has been famously stingy in recent years. The A’s will get full revenue-sharing from MLB this year, under an exception carved out because of its ongoing stadium saga. 

The Bay Area, where the team had played since the 1970s, is one of the biggest markets in the country, meaning the A’s would normally not receive revenue-sharing. But because of the stadium issues, the team is set to receive a $70 million revenue-sharing payout next year. The collective bargaining agreement requires teams to spend 150% of the revenue-sharing payouts they receive, and the union can file a grievance against teams if they don’t. That means the payroll the A’s need to hit would be a team-record $105 million.

Next year will be the first time the A’s receive a full revenue-sharing payment, after seeing a 25% payout in 2022 that has increased by 25% each year since.

The team will play in a Triple-A stadium in Sacramento for at least the next three years. It has said it intends to move to Las Vegas in 2028.

The A’s quest for a new stadium helped them get a partial disqualification in the new CBA, which started in 2022. The A’s got 25% of their allotment in 2022 and have seen the amount increase by 25% each year, which means a full payment of roughly $70 million for 2025. 

The A’s previous highest payroll was $99 million, in 2019. They have inched toward breaking that this winter. Luis Severino’s three-year, $67 million deal marked the most expensive commitment to a player since Eric Chavez’s six-year, $66 million extension in 2004. The team also traded for Jeffrey Springs from the Rays to add to their rotation depth. 

If the team falls short of the $105 million benchmark, the union can file a grievance if it believes the team isn’t spending revenue-sharing dollars to “improve its performance on the field,” according to the CBA.

In 2018, the A’s were one of four teams the MLBPA filed a grievance against for revenue-sharing issues along with the Marlins, Pirates, and Rays. The grievance process is slow and they were not resolved during the last rounds of CBA negotiations in 2021 and 2022, though The Athletic reported at least one team is no longer involved in it. In 2019, the MLBPA filed another revenue-sharing grievance against some of the same four teams. Should the A’s fail to present a compelling case, they could face a fine. 

Rooker’s deal, which pays an average of $10 million annually through its first three years, moves the club’s estimated 2025 payroll to $97 million, according to FanGraphs, just $8 million away from the $105 million needed to avoid a grievance.