The Athletics opened their 2025 home slate on Monday night, and things did not go well.
The Chicago Cubs cruised to a dominant 18-3 win over the A’s at Sutter Health Park in Sacramento, which will play home to the team as it prepares to move permanently to Las Vegas. Carson Kelly hit for the cycle in the win, too, which made him the first player in the league to do so and the first Cubs player to pull that feat off since 1993.
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Sutter Health Park will be the A’s home for the next three seasons as they await their new ballpark in Las Vegas, and they’ll share it with its usual residents, the Sacramento River Cats, the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A affiliate. A’s players also all wore No. 24 during the game to honor Rickey Henderson, who died in December at the age of 65. Henderson’s daughters threw out the first pitch.
While the minor-league ballpark still only has a capacity of 14,014, some renovations were completed prior to the A’s move-in: there’s a new two-story clubhouse, renovated hitting tunnels and expanded dugouts and bullpens.
Before the game, outfielder Brett Rooker said he hoped the atmosphere felt like “a very big SEC college baseball game in terms of the energy that we bring and with the capacity that is allowed,” per USA Today’s Bob Nightengale.
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Before Monday’s game, A’s owner John Fisher said he wasn’t nervous.
“I’m confident, without being overconfident, and I’m excited about where we’re going,” he said, according to The Athletic.
One element of the A’s new digs that is decidedly not major league is the media setup, which appears to be a large shed outside the ballpark.
The field also didn’t appear to be in the best condition, at least in the left-field corner, prior to the game.
The A’s have an option to play in West Sacramento for a fourth season in 2028 if the new fixed-roof ballpark in Vegas is not ready.
Things started off poorly for the home team, with pitcher Joey Estes giving up back-to-back home runs in the first inning, one to noted torpedo bat user Dansby Swanson.
The Cubs put up four runs in the first inning, and then gave up five runs in the fifth inning and six in the sixth inning. That completely blew the game open, and allowed Chicago to roll to the X-run win.
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One of the lone bright spots in the game for the A’s came from shortstop Jacob Wilson, who now has the honor of hitting the team’s first home run in their new stadium. It was his first career home run, too.
There was even a brief drone delay in the seventh inning.
Kelly then the a triple in the eighth inning to complete the cycle. He hit his home run in the fourth, a single in the fifth and a double in the sixth.
In total, the Cubs put up 18 runs on 21 hits in the win. That got them to 3-4 on the year. The loss dropped the A’s to 2-3 on the season. They’ll wrap up the three-game series with the Cubs on Wednesday afternoon, and will then head back on the road to take on the Colorado Rockies starting on Friday afternoon.
