Luis Severino signed a three-year, $67 million deal this past winter to serve at the whims of the West Sacramento Athletics Of Yolo County. He knew he was signing with the A's because that's what they told him he was doing, but he had not sufficiently considered the West Sacramento Of Yolo County part, and is now miserable because of it.
In a chat with The Athletic's Yankees beat writer Brendan Kuty, Severino, who left New York last year to sign the largest contract in A's history, emptied out his grievances when asked why his road splits (2-2, 3.23, etc.) are so much better than his home splits (0-7, 6.79, etc.), and his analysis boils down to this: West Sac sucks.
Severino listed smaller crowds, a lack of air conditioning and a different kind of energy, among other factors, as drawbacks to pitching at Sutter Health Ballpark — the minor-league stadium the A’s retrofitted into their home park this season after leaving Oakland Coliseum.
“It feels like a spring training kind of game every time I pitch, and every time other guys pitch,” Severino said.
The A's of course know all this, why is why they never reference the town or the ballpark in which they actually play their home games. They live in shame enforced by their oleaginous employer John Fisher, and perform commensurately, although given the payroll and lack of quality commitment Fisher has traditionally applied to the team they would probably be as miserable in Oakland, Las Vegas, or Monte Carlo.
But Severino, used to New York standards, pinpointed the reasons for his unhappiness, and they are all in where he works. This is neither surprising nor particularly scandalous, as other players from other teams have criticized the clubhouses, the mound, the field in general, the atmosphere and the all-around A's-ness of it. Or to be more fair and accurate, the all-around Fisher-ness of it.
Now, our pal in photography Bob Nightengale tells us that general manager David Forst is likely to trade Severino just to stop watching and hearing him. It is not an item laden with quotes, and is buried under a rampant encomium of all the things that make Milwaukee the center of the baseball universe, but it stands to figure that Forst and Fisher want Severino to be someone else's twice-monthly $1.8 million check through 2027. Severino signed the deal because the A's needed to spend money to avoid paying MLB's cheapskate tax; he signed it because a $7 million raise after going 11-7 in his first full season since 2018 is never a bad deal.
Except now. He hates being a West Sacster and would almost certainly welcome a trade to nearly anywhere. The only thing the A's could do to make him more unhappy is to yank him from a starting rotation that is paying full retail for playing in a park that is the most commodious in MLB for hitters, but that would seem fishy (if not Fishy) for a team pretending to care about its results. Having 10 years in, Severino has no time for Fisher's dodge, and the A's having agreed to give him nearly $70 million have no time for his sniveling. It is a marriage made in the hell the franchise has built for itself, so it is hard to find much sympathy on either side, except for this: One side has John Fisher, the tiebreaker that settles all arguments.
Ultimately, this is what the A's get for trying to evade the lowball payroll tax by signing Severino in the first place, and the fact that it has backfired so wonderfully and spectacularly and swiftly is in its own way delightful. That they have so few other players with the leverage to snipe their way back to the Major Leagues means that this won't be the start of a parade out of town. In other words, Brent Rooker is trapped, and Tyler Soderstrom thinks getting an endorsement deal from Sodastream is Christmas in June.
But this is the A's’ future, probably even after they reach Vegas, if they ever do. Fisher is not going to turn this into Dodgers East, or even Angels East. He hasn't got it in him, and if he did, he would punch himself in the face until it stopped. It will be fun, though, to see who takes the money this coming winter to keep the team over the skinflint tax line. The ballpark won't be an unknown factor then, and Luis Severino will be the canary in a coal mine that sits squarely in the sun.
