How The Athletics’ New Home Impacted Offense In 2025

When the Athletics announced that they would be leaving Oakland to play their home games in Sacramento for the 2025 through 2027 seasons—and maybe longer—it represented a clear downgrade for players.

A’s players, coaches and club personnel had to uproot their lives in the Bay Area to move 80-some miles inland to play at Sutter Health Park, a minor league facility that would still be hosting Triple-A Sacramento River Cats games when the A’s were on the road.

The River Cats are a Giants affiliate. They have played all their home games at Sutter Health this season, though they lost six home dates due to scheduling conflicts with the A’s.

While the Athletics in Sacramento situation created chaos, it also creates an ideal scenario to see how a Triple-A park would play when used as an MLB facility for an entire season.*

Would adding major league talent to a minor league park change the park’s character? How would the Athletics’ new home compare with the Oakland Coliseum, where they had played since moving to the West Coast in 1968.

Note: All data presented here is generated from home games only through Sunday, Sept. 7, counting the batting and pitching statistics at the venue. All “per game” references are figured per 76 plate appearances to provide a consistent definition of what constitutes a “game.”

Let’s address the most basic question: How does the run environment in home games look for the Athletics in Sacramento this season compared with how it looked at the Oakland Coliseum in 2024?

YearVenueR/GHR/GOBPSLGOPSISOBABIPwOBA2025Sacramento (MLB)9.942.79.335.450.785.187.307.3372024Oakland (MLB)8.671.93.312.383.695.142.291.302

Athletics home games in Sacramento this year feature more than one additional run per game, nearly one additional home run per game, as well as large spikes in OPS (90 points), isolated slugging (45 points), BABIP (16 points) and wOBA (35 points) compared with A’s home games last year in Oakland.

In other words, the difference in home park status is dramatic for A’s players and visiting players accustomed to the Oakland Coliseum.

These trends hold whether viewing the Coliseum in 2024 alone or as part of a three-year sample from 2022 to 2024 shown below.

YearVenueR/GHR/GOBPSLGOPSISOBABIPwOBA2022-24Oakland (MLB)8.541.94.311.382.693.146.284.302

The three-year Coliseum rates are consistent with the standalone 2024 data. The rate of runs scored and home runs are nearly identical. The biggest difference can be found in BABIP, which was .284 in Coliseum home games from 2022 to 2024.

This number is heavily influenced by a .275 BABIP data point in 2022 that was likely attributable to the last season of infield shift and its effect on suppressing hits on balls in play. In general, the Coliseum tended to play as a BABIP suppressor because all its foul territory ended more at-bats without hits relative to other ballparks.

Sutter Health Park in Sacramento has operated as a Triple-A park in the Pacific Coast League since 2000. It has a reputation for being a neutral or perhaps even pitcher-friendly venue in the high-scoring PCL.

Many PCL teams play at altitude, which aids ball flight, especially in conjunction with the livelier major league ball that has been used at Triple-A since 2019. Many ballparks built at elevation have large outfield dimensions, forcing outfielders to play deep and allowing for a greater number of hits to fall in front of them. Some PCL parks also have playing surfaces that play fast because of hot, dry conditions.

Sacramento was an exception when compared with other PCL parks. It saw about 25% fewer runs scored and home runs in home games compared with road games for the years 2022 through 2024.

But that data was compiled by Triple-A players. How would Sutter Health play with big leaguers making pitches, taking swings, running bases and fielding balls in play?

Let’s take a look at Sacramento data from this season, both by the A’s and Triple-A River Cats and compare it with a Sutter Health Triple-A baseline from 2022 to 2024.

YearVenueR/GHR/GOBPSLGOPSISOBABIPwOBA2025Sacramento (MLB)9.942.79.335.450.785.187.307.3372025Sacramento (AAA)9.622.26.332.401.733.162.302.3202022-24Sacramento (AAA)9.122.06.337.390.727.153.299.323

Power production is generally the biggest difference between levels of the minor leagues and between the minors and majors overall. That holds true in this comparison of big leaguers and minor leaguers in Sacramento home games.

Players at higher levels are more physically mature, and MLB organizations select for power production when promoting players. Major league players today at all positions and in all lineup spots are expected to produce power, not at equivalent levels across the board but certainly at levels higher than yesteryear.

Home games in Sacramento this year see one additional home run every two games when used as an MLB facility compared to a Triple-A one. The slugging percentage and OPS climb by about 50 points and the isolated slugging by 25 points when the big leaguers—and not Triple-A hitters—use Sutter Health.

The park also is seeing slightly more power in Triple-A games this year when compared with the 2022 to 2024 baseline. This could be a blip created by weather patterns or structural changes to the facility or its surroundings—or possibly to other factors related to Sutter Health’s constant use, such as wear patterns on the mound, infield surface or outfield grass.

Some players voiced their concerns throughout the year. A’s righthander Luis Severino criticized the home experience back in June in a conversation with The Athletic. Zack Wheeler compared pitching on the mound to cement, while Twins righty Joe Ryan speculated that mound conditions could have contributed to his teammate Pablo Lopez’s injury this season.

Keep in mind that virtually all baseball facilities receive regular “rest” periods in between homestands. Exceptions include Sacramento this year and Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Fla., which hosts both the Jupiter and Palm Beach clubs in the Florida State League.

A Powerful New Perspective

MLB teams play half their games at home. It’s also where they return after roadtrips to the other coast or sojourns around their own division.

So it stands to reason that dramatically altering a team’s home ballpark can change the way players perceive the game.

For Athletics players who played for the team in both 2024 and 2025, they have a powerful new perspective on MLB life.

Here is a comparison of Athletics park factors for this season in Sacramento and last season in Oakland. A park factor simply compares production in a team’s home park versus production in the parks it visits on the road.**

YearVenueRunsHROBPSLGISOBABIPwOBA2025Sacramento (MLB)1051021061071061081062024Oakland (MLB)987498918210095

A 100 park factor indicates that home and road values are equal—or that the difference is negligible—while anything greater than 100 indicates that the outcome is more common in home games than road games.

It’s clear from this presentation that home runs are far more common in A’s home games than road games this year than they were last year—and by a factor of 28 percentage points. The isolated slugging and wOBA park factors are also up dramatically, which makes sense because they are driven by home run totals. Here are some other Sutter Health Park tidbits . . .

• Its MLB Statcast park factor of 108 trails only Coors Field
• Only Coors Field sees more hits and totals bases
• Only Coors and Dodgers Stadium have seen more runs scored

While the Athletics’ home run park factor is higher this year than it was last year at the Coliseum, it is not the highest in MLB. Nor do the A’s see the highest rate of home runs in home games this season. They trail the Dodgers, Orioles and Blue Jays on that count and are more or less on equal footing with the Yankees, Angels and Rays.

It’s just that in this case, it has to be jarring for A’s players to go from the park that saw the fifth-fewest home runs in MLB last year to the park with the fourth-most this year.

* The Blue Jays played 23 games at Triple-A Buffalo in 2021, but that wasn’t an apples-to-apples comparison because of the duration of the stay and just the overall strangeness of the first full season out of the pandemic.

** Temperature likely plays a role. The average summer temperature in Sacramento is 10 to 15 degrees warmer than Oakland.