By Mauricio Segura August 25, 2025
Photo: GBT Graphics
Sharing a ballpark sounds neighborly until the schedules collide and the lawn needs surgery. That’s been the Sacramento reality in 2025, with the Triple-A River Cats and the MLB A’s splitting Sutter Health Park while Las Vegas gets built. The headline question is clear: did the A’s jam up the Cats’ season? The answer is yes in some obvious ways, no in a few important ones, and the scoreboard is tighter than outsiders think. The hard proof first: as of this afternoon, Sacramento sits second in the Pacific Coast League West’s second-half race at 30–21, exactly two games behind Tacoma, a true pennant chase with ten toes on the gas.
The wrench part started in June, when the River Cats had six home games yanked to Tacoma so the yard could be re-prepped for MLB use. That mid-season relocation stretched into a grinding three-week road stretch, bad for rhythm, bad for gate, and bad for a team that needs Sacramento weekends to breathe. Whatever your opinion on the big-league cameo, that was a straight negative for the minor-league tenant and their fans.
Attendance paints the other half of the picture. By mid-July, the A’s were pulling just under 9,900 paid per game at Sutter Health Park, near the bottom of MLB, while the River Cats were averaging roughly 4,700 across 36 home dates, down from about 5,400 last year. That is money and mindshare shifting, and it mirrors what you felt in the stands. More recently, the A’s even hit a season low announced crowd of 7,731 on August 11, a reminder that novelty wears off fast when the product struggles. These are dated snapshots, not end-of-season averages, but they are the most recent public markers.
On the field, the River Cats have not sulked. The second-half climb to two games back is real, backed by a 5–5 last-10 that is more grind than glide but keeps them on Tacoma’s bumper. This is not a team drowning in the big-league shadow, it is one threading the needle between disrupted homestands and a playoff chase that still matters on August 25.
The ballpark itself did get a major-league polish to handle the workload: video and audio upgrades, new training space, and a beefed-up clubhouse, useful for both clubs even if the Cats did not ask for a roommate. The economics still cut both ways: more event nights bring more bodies into the Bridge District, and businesses around the park reported holiday-weekend boosts when the Giants came through. That is not a River Cats win so much as a citywide ripple effect of two schedules filling one calendar.
And yes, the “Gold Diggers” alternate-identity rollout absolutely bombed, canceled within a day after a sexist promo video drew universal blowback. The team apologized, scrubbed it, and moved on. Call it a self-inflicted low that had nothing to do with the A’s and everything to do with reading the room.
So, did the A’s throw a wrench into the River Cats’ season? Absolutely. Six displaced home dates and a choppy calendar are hard to spin. Did the wrench break the engine? Thankfully, no. Sacramento’s second-half standing says the baseball is very much alive, even if the turnstiles and promotional misfires told a harsher story earlier in the summer. This experiment has exposed a simple truth about the market: MLB can draw attention, but it cannot guarantee devotion. Triple-A thrives on routine, affordability, and local identity, and routine took the biggest hit. If the Cats keep pace and snag October, the season’s verdict will feel a lot less like collateral damage and a lot more like resilience in a cramped house.
