According to ESPN and ABC7, officials are prepared to offer the team a five-year, $97-million extension on the A’s lease at the Coliseum that would keep them in Oakland for at least three years, with the option to opt out after 2028, when the A’s ballpark in Las Vegas is expected to be ready for play.

It represents a huge rent increase for the A’s, who have paid about $1.5 million in rent and would start paying $19.4 million per year next year. If the team opts out after three years, it still has to pay the full amount, bringing the average rent to $32.3 million per year.

ESPN reported that the A’s wanted a two-year deal worth $17 million to remain at the Coliseum.

In addition, Oakland officials are hoping to agree with MLB on at least one of three stipulations: getting a one-year window with exclusive negotiating rights for an expansion team in Oakland; voting to leave the A’s branding and colors in Oakland; or aiding in the sale of the team to a local ownership group.

And perhaps most notably, Oakland is asking the A’s to sell their 50% share of the Coliseum to allow for redevelopment on the property.

Aiding in the difficulty is MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, who has said repeatedly that he cannot grant any guarantees as it relates to expansion, seeing as the 30 owners would first need to vote on expansion. That vote isn’t expected to take place for years, not until the A’s and Tampa Bay Rays start playing in new ballparks. And Oakland would have to join a competitive pool of cities who are also hoping for an expansion team, among them: Nashville, Portland, Salt Lake City, Charlotte, San Antonio, Montreal and perhaps Sacramento.

Sacramento officials have talked openly about their desire to add another pro sports team. Kings owner Vivek Ranadive said last week he’s friends with A’s owner John Fisher and is hoping, if the A’s come to Sacramento, it would prove to MLB that Sacramento is a viable option for expansion. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said recently that he’s hoping the A’s remain in Oakland, but if they don’t, Sacramento would welcome the A’s on a temporary basis.

Neither the A’s nor the Oakland mayor’s office responded for comment on Monday, but both sides have offered amicable remarks over the last two months as they’ve come back to the bargaining table to see if they can keep the team in Oakland a little while longer.

For the A’s, it’s simple: They need a temporary home.

Staying in Oakland would be the easiest move. It’d require no new negotiations with the A’s broadcasting partners, NBC Sports, and they would retain their reported $67 million in local media rights compensation by keeping the team at the Coliseum.

If they move to Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park, the Triple-A home of the San Francisco Giants, the A’s would have to renegotiate a media rights deal that could see their annual compensation take a big cut. Sacramento is the 20th-ranked media market in the country, according to Nielsen, making it the largest one-team media market in the country.

Sutter Health Park, built in 2000, has one of the largest capacities of any minor league ballpark. It seats just more than 10,000, then fits another 4,000-plus people in standing areas and grass berms in the outfield.

Of course, it’s uncertain whether or not the A’s would need that much seating.

They averaged just 6,680 during their first homestand of the season against the Cleveland Guardians, when they went 1-3 while being outscored 29-11.

They had fewer fans show up for the entire series (26,722) than they had at their Opening Day game last year (26,805).

A’s fans have clearly become disenchanted with a team that only recently took down its “Rooted in Oakland” signage that had been up since 2017, when the team announced its “commitment to building a ballpark in its longtime home city.”

Fisher ended that idea last spring, when the team announced it was moving to Las Vegas after the city promised $380 million in public funding for a new ballpark. At least some of that money is in question, though, as the Schools Over Stadiums political action group will find out April 9 if it can begin collecting signatures for a referendum that would give voters a say in November.

Schools Over Stadiums spokesman Alex Marks believes the group has raised enough money — largely thanks to A’s fans in Oakland — and signed up enough volunteers to collect the necessary signatures in time.

Marks said if they’re able to get any of the $380 million in public money revoked via a vote in November, or via a lawsuit that ruled Senate Bill 1 as unconstitutional for raising taxes without a two-thirds supermajority, Fisher’s deal with Las Vegas would fall apart.

“It’s a house of cards,” Marks said.

To protect themselves, the A’s could sign a long-term lease with the Coliseum that would give them time to figure out a next step.

In the meantime, they’re off to another horrible start on the field and in the ticket office.

MLB is hoping the A’s will figure out where they intend to play next season as soon as possible so the league can release its 2025 schedule sometime in the early summer.

“They gave in,” said Anson Casanares, vice president of the Oakland 68s fan group.

Seemingly ignoring that the thousands of fans were planning to flood the parking lots to boycott the game and the team’s pending move to Las Vegas, the A’s originally decided to block entry to their parking lot until two hours before their 7:07 p.m. Opening Day game against the Cleveland Guardians on Thursday, a stark difference from last year, when they opened four hours early.

Thursday, cars lined up in front of the B Lot entrance as early as noon. By 3 p.m., there was a line at least a half-mile long.

Instead of waiting until 5:07 p.m. to open the parking lot gates, the A’s folded their cards and opened the gates soon after 4 p.m.

Cars began flooding into the parking lot. Within 15 minutes, Last Dive Bar founder Bryan Johansen, one of the event organizers, had set up his merchandise tent with free shirts, pins and other items as fans began getting in line.

Soon after, a band began playing music, beer cans were being cracked open and the smell of Butcher’s Daughter BBQ filled the air.

Donna Fong, a solo grand champion pitmaster and lifelong A’s fan, brought 40 pounds of chicken and 50 pounds of ribs she had been cooking since 8 a.m. She set up her Butcher’s Daughter BBQ tent and began giving away the food for free.

“I’m an A’s fan and wanted to give back to the A’s fans in their last season, so why not give free BBQ?” Fong said. “It makes me want to cry (that the A’s are leaving). I can see the stadium from my house. This was my retirement plan, I was going to come here and watch all the games.”

Johansen said he arrived at noon as one of the first cars there and was working with Oakland A’s vice president of stadium operations, Dave Rinetti, to figure out how to get fans safely into the parking lot. They organized three lanes: one lane for employees to get in, one lane for cars forming a line, and one lane for cars to get out.

About an hour before they had planned to open the parking lot, the A’s, charging $30 for parking, opened the gates.

“I wasn’t surprised,” Johansen said. “The A’s love Last Dive Bar, they just don’t want to admit it… That was perfect, nobody impeded traffic either way. Everybody lined up. It was perfect.

“The entire Coliseum staff, parking lot supervisors, everyone was courteous. They were awesome.”

Most of the fans entering the A Lot on 66th Avenue said they planned to attend the game, despite the fan boycott taking place in the B Lot.

Fan groups said they supported fans’ decision to go to the game, but most fans partying in the B Lot said they had no intentions of going into the Coliseum, where the A’s eventually lost their opener 8-0.

“I don’t want to give John Fisher any money,” said Hallie Maier, who took BART from Marin just to hang out in the parking lot.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said her husband, Mark. “The Oakland A’s are such a part of Oakland. There’s so much tradition here.”

It might’ve been the last Opening Day at the Coliseum, seeing as the A’s lease is up at the end of 2024 and the team has not been able to come to an agreement with the City of Oakland on an extension. Sacramento is viewed as one possible temporary home until the Las Vegas ballpark is scheduled to open in 2028.

But members of a teacher’s union in Nevada are trying to stop that. The Schools Over Stadiums political action group has been working with A’s fans to collect money, hoping to stop public funding for the Vegas ballpark. And on Thursday, they had raised $23,000 in less than an hour of opening their tent in the B Lot. One Bay Area donor promised to double all money raised on Thursday, up to $100,000.

“Folks are offering whatever they can,” said Schools Over Stadiums spokesman Alex Marks. “To raise $23,000 before we even got started is fantastic. Folks want to keep their team and help us out in Nevada with our public schools.”

Inside the Coliseum, the A’s took the field to a stadium that looked mostly empty, despite an announced attendance of 13,522, half the size of last year’s.

Manager Mark Kotsay said he understood why the fans were boycotting the game.

“My heart is with the fans,” he said. “I understand the emotion and the impact, not just from the organization’s history of 55 years or more of being here. They want to keep this team here and the way they express it is with passion. I wouldn’t expect anything less from Oakland A’s fans.”

Fascinating off the field, at least.

Their planned move to Las Vegas is full of potential pitfalls. They have a fanbase that’s revolting, a ballpark that’s crumbling and no home stadium to play in for at least three seasons, if not more, until the proposed ballpark in Vegas can open.

This won’t be any ordinary season at the Coliseum.

Some storylines to keep an eye on:

1. What happens in Vegas (if they ever get there)

When sports teams announce relocation, there tends to be excitement in the city that’s about to get a new team. That wasn’t the case last month, when A’s owner John Fisher completed a short interview at the Vegas Chamber, then a speaker came on stage to ask the crowd, “The Las Vegas A’s, we like the sound of that, right Vegas?” The crowd was silent. “Are we alive back there?” the speaker asked. No applause. Nothing.

Last month, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman went on the Front Office Sports podcast and said what A’s fans have been screaming from the rooftops all winter: Building this stadium “does not make sense.” She thought the A’s would want to develop far more land, not a tiny 9-acre plot on the landmark Tropicana Hotel that can’t even fit a stadium with a retractable roof. She later clarified her comments saying that she believed that Fisher prefers to stay in Oakland and build a new waterfront stadium in the East Bay. Las Vegas should be Fisher’s backup plan, she said.

Also in February, a political action group made up of school teachers filed a lawsuit that claims SB1, the Nevada bill that will provide the A’s with $380 million in public funding for a new stadium, is unconstitutional. The teachers believe the state constitution requires a two-thirds vote to pass any bill that adds new taxes, but SB1 failed to meet that standard, passing without a supermajority (25-15 in the Assembly and 13-8 in the Senate). The teachers are simultaneously working on a petition that could send some of that funding to a public vote in November.

So, does Las Vegas really want the A’s? Stay tuned.

2. Will any fans show up to the Coliseum this season?

Three years after the pandemic-shortened season prevented most teams from having any fans in the stadium, MLB once again saw a strong uptick in attendance. On average, teams increased their home attendance by about 2,500 fans per game from 2022 to 2023.

The A’s increased theirs by only 427. And their average per-game attendance of 10,276 was more than 4,000 fewer than the 29th-ranked team, the Miami Marlins. It’d have been even lower without the 27,759 who showed up on a Tuesday in June for a reverse boycott.

This season, fans are again planning to boycott. The Oakland 68s and Last Dive Bar fan groups have encouraged fans to show up to the Coliseum parking lot on Opening Day but not to buy tickets. They’ve also encouraged fans to cancel season tickets and instead donate to the Nevada school teachers. They hosted their own fan fest on Feb. 24, seeing as the A’s haven’t had a fan fest since 2020, and saw more than 10,000 people show up.

Desperate to get people in the seats, the A’s seemed to respond to the Opening Day boycott with a limited-time offer so bizarre it might be the first and only time you ever hear one like it: Buy an Opening Day ticket, typically one of the most sought-after tickets in the sport, get one free.

In an apparent attempt to crash the party before it got started, the A’s announced last week they wouldn’t open the parking lots until two hours before game time. Last year, they opened four hours early.

3. Are the A’s actually trying?

It is believed the A’s long-term plan is to sign some star players just in time for their new ballpark. Team president Dave Kaval and Fisher are both on the record saying the A’s will have a competitive payroll when they get to Vegas. For now? Forget about it.

Last year, their $57-million payroll ranked dead last. They’re on track to have a payroll of around $63 million in 2024.

Shohei Ohtani, the highest-paid player in the sport, makes on average $46 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The A’s highest-paid player will be right-hander Ross Stripling, who is making $12.5 million, some of that paid by San Francisco after the teams made a rare trade that sent the former Giant across the Bay Bridge.

Via free agency, the A’s signed lefty Alex Wood, another former Giant, to a one-year, $8.5-million deal, and reliever Trevor Gott to a one-year deal worth $1.5 million. Last week, though, it was announced Gott will undergo Tommy John surgery and miss the season.

The veteran presence of Stripling and Wood on a roster that also includes a number of young pitchers should provide the A’s with much-needed leadership, even if they don’t add any wins. The two of them combined for -0.1 fWAR (wins above replacement) last year.

The A’s will try to improve upon their 29th-ranked 5.48 ERA from a season ago. On offense, they didn’t add any impact hitters, but they can’t do much worse than their .669 OPS and 3.61 runs per game, both worst in baseball last year.

4. Are there any players to keep an eye on?

Plenty, perhaps none more than second baseman Zack Gelof, who led the team with 2.6 WAR despite playing only half the season in the big leagues. Ranked by WAR, he posted the best season by a rookie with 300 plate appearances or fewer since the Mets’ Jeff McNeil in 2018 and Oakland’s Matt Olson in 2017.

He hit .267 with an .840 OPS to go with 20 doubles, 14 home runs and 14 stolen bases in just 69 games. The sky is the limit for the 24-year-old former second-round pick out of the University of Virginia. And considering he won’t be eligible for free agency until 2030, Gelof could end up being the first star player the A’s lock up to a long-term deal after moving to Las Vegas.

Esteury Ruiz (67 stolen bases last year), Shea Langeliers (22 home runs) and Tyler Soderstrom (former top prospect) are a few of the A’s young hitters to watch.

There are a few exciting pitchers, too.

General manager David Forst deserves some credit for landing a trio of pitchers — JP Sears, Ken Waldichuk, Luis Medina — for Frankie Montas two years ago. Sears will be the club’s No. 3 pitcher this year while Waldichuk and Medina will both begin the year on the injured list, though all three look like they could be mainstays in the rotation at some point in the future.

Joe Boyle, acquired from the Reds in exchange for Sam Moll, has electric stuff. His 98-mph fastball and hard slider ranked him near the top of MLB pitchers in velocity, chase rate and barrel percentage during his 16-inning debut in 2023. He’ll be the club’s No. 5 starter.

Mason Miller is another power right-hander to keep an eye on, though elbow trouble limited him in 2023 and he’ll be used out of relief this season.

5. Are there any future stars down on the farm?

A team constantly trading All-Star players like Olson, Matt Chapman and Sean Murphy, among others, should have one of the game’s best farm systems, but the experts don’t see it that way.

ESPN and Baseball America recently ranked the A’s prospect pool 25th in MLB, while The Athletic ranked the A’s dead last.

Oakland’s top prospect, right-hander Luis Morales, is a 20-year-old from Cuba who is the club’s only player in ESPN’s top-100 prospect rankings. Slick-fielding shortstop Jacob Wilson, selected sixth overall in 2023, is close behind, but his lack of power (one home run in 26 games during his pro debut) has some questioning his potential.

Darrell Hernaiz, a third baseman/shortstop acquired from the Orioles for Cole Irvin last summer, was recently informed that he made the Opening Day roster.

Why haven’t the A’s done better with their farm system? For one, they haven’t benefited from the draft the way other rebuilding (tanking) teams have in recent years. MLB moved to a new lottery system, making it no guarantee that teams with terrible records will get a top-three selection. The A’s finished with the second-worst record in 2022 but only got the sixth selection in a draft that was widely considered to feature five future stars, all selected ahead of the A’s. They finished with the worst record last year but will draft fourth in 2024.

All together, the A’s have a long way to go. And if they lose 100 games again this year, they’ll be just the 11th team in MLB history to lose 100 three years in a row, and the first since the Royals did it from 2004-06.

The outlook is bleak, but for baseball fans in the East Bay, there are at least a few storylines worth watching in 2024.

As early as noon on Thursday, fans are expected to begin lining up to enter the parking lot at the Coliseum, but many won’t actually buy a ticket to the A’s Opening Night game against the Cleveland Guardians, a sign of protest against the team’s pending move to Las Vegas in 2028.

While 26,805 people went to the team’s opening game at the Coliseum last year, almost as many are planning to show up to the parking lot Thursday while boycotting the actual game, said Bryan Johansen, founder of A’s fan group Last Dive Bar and one of the organizers of the boycott.

“This is going to be like Burning Man,” Johansen said. “But we’re not going to set anything on fire.”

He has been organizing fan events such as Fans Fest, a celebration of Oakland sports teams in Jack London Square last month, and last year’s reverse boycott, which also took place in the A’s parking lot before fans eventually packed the Coliseum with almost 28,000 people on a Tuesday in June.

This time, though, there’s a big problem: The A’s appear to be staging a protest of their own.

While last year they opened the parking lots four hours before the season-opener, and Johansen said they’ve opened as early as six hours before the game in years past, this year the A’s aren’t playing ball.

They plan to keep the parking lot gates closed until two hours before the 7:07 p.m. PT game, a plan that could present serious public safety concerns if cars are stuck in line, potentially blocking the freeway exit and creating miles-long traffic jams.

Oakland Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan said on social media Wednesday that she’s encouraging fans to take public transportation and is also asking the A’s to open their parking lot earlier “and not harm community health and safety by creating a backup.”

The A’s issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon saying, “Our gate times are based on attendance, and we are projecting that the game attendance will align with these times.”

It remains to be seen what the City of Oakland and the Oakland Police Department will be able to do to prevent such a mess. OPD declined comment on Wednesday afternoon.

“With our social media platform, we have received numerous messages that people are going to come as early as 12 o’clock, 1 o’clock to line up,” Johansen said. “We foresee the line to get in the stadium is going to be all the way to the freeway at 1 or 2 o’clock at the earliest.”

Making matters trickier, there will be a concert next door to the Coliseum at Oakland Arena, where The Love Hard Tour featuring Keyshia Cole and Trey Songz will be starting at 8 p.m.

“We’d like the A’s to open the gates earlier,” Johansen said. “Regardless of the situation with fans and ownership, we’re still the fans, we’re still the ones who have supported this team for 55 years. It’s our Opening Day, too. Whether we go in the stadium or not, we deserve the same respect as far as gate opening times that we’ve had every single year since the stadium opened.”

Johansen and other leaders of A’s fan groups have made one thing very clear for every event they’ve hosted: They’re showing up to celebrate Oakland sports, not to express anger or hatred towards anybody. They’re frustrated with the A’s for the way the team has handled its pending departure, but they have no problem with any fans who choose to attend Thursday’s game and buy a ticket.

Johansen is hoping even fans attending the game will feel welcomed to the parking lot celebration, which he expects to feature prize giveaways, food, drinks, T-shirts, air horns, cowbells and vuvuzelas as the fans make as much noise as they can from the parking lot.

“Just give a night of reprieve for fans to voice their frustration in a creative and vibrant way, not in a violent way,” he said.

Johansen is asking boycotting fans to use the money they would’ve spent on tickets as a donation to Schools Over Stadiums, a political action group formed by a Nevada teachers’ union that’s trying to stop $380 million of public funding from going towards a ballpark in Las Vegas.

Schools Over Stadiums representative Alex Marks said the organization will have a tent in the A’s parking lot on Thursday and plans to collect donations, while a major donor in the Bay Area has promised to match all donations up to $100,000.

Schools Over Stadiums will present oral arguments on April 9 in a courtroom in Carson City, where the teachers hope they’ll be able to finalize a petition that, with enough signatures, could send the public funding to a ballot in November.

“We’ll be ready to hit the streets with our volunteers either way,” Marks said.

Some of the 7,850 fans at the Coliseum for Monday’s exhibition game between the A’s and San Francisco Giants said they were also concerned about the potential chaos on Thursday and would not be attending the game or parking lot.

“I’m coming on Saturday, but that (boycott) is too much,” said Juan Morales.

Gilbert Morin III, from San Jose, attended Monday’s game and plans to attend more games this year, but won’t support the A’s if they complete their move out of Oakland. He said he has put 40 years of fandom into this team.

“Baseball and football used to be for the working man, who would work all week, and then come out and enjoy the game,” Morin III said. “Now they’re taking it away from us. Now they’re saying that it’s not sports, it’s entertainment.

“Just let me spend my money because I’ve worked my (expletive) off all week, and I want to enjoy a game.”

A’s star Zack Gelof, a 24-year-old who could soon be the face of the franchise, said he has empathy for the fans’ heartbreak over losing the team to Las Vegas.

The players are facing their own uncertainty over where the team will play next year. The team’s lease at the Coliseum expires after 2024 and Sacramento is being floated as a potential home for the next three years.

“It’s tough whenever you lose a team,” Gelof said. “I’m not really sure what’s going to happen. As far as players, all we can do is control what we can control. At the end of the day, that’s winning baseball games. We just try to put a winning team together and have a lot of fun doing it.”

Bay Area News Group reporter Joseph Dycus contributed to this report.

“Just look at the guy,” Wood said. “He looks like a big leaguer for sure.”

The 6-foot-5, 205-pound Gelof is on the verge of making his first Opening Day start on Thursday.

And perhaps another thing: Become the face of the A’s franchise.

“No, I talked to him today about just being Zack,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said Tuesday. “Everything he did last year, his routines, his process, the way he works, from the time he walks into the locker room until the game is done, is the only expectation we have for him. He leads by example.”

Kotsay is clearly being careful about putting too much pressure on the 24-year-old after his dynamite rookie season in which he hit .267 with an .840 OPS while leading the team with 2.6 WAR, despite playing in only 69 games.

“Watch him play the game, watch his actions, watch him in the dugout,” Kotsay said. “He’s quiet and yet he leads. He plays the game hard. You don’t see him sitting in his locker room much during the day. You see him studying film, working out, taking care of his body. That’s just the ultimate pro.”

He’s arguably the most important player on the roster and the centerpiece of a team trying to turn the corner after back-to-back 100-loss seasons. But a year ago, he was merely the No. 3 ranked prospect in a farm system that isn’t highly regarded.

Last February, Baseball America wrote that Gelof “has a chance to develop into a solid-average regular for the rebuilding A’s.”

After his breakout rookie year, surely the A’s are hoping for something more.

“He’s got all the tools to be an All-Star,” Kotsay said. “Sometimes the second year is a little more challenging than the first. When the league gets to know you, you have to make adjustments. That’s the biggest thing for Zack this year, being able to make adjustments.”

Gelof said he had to make some adjustments last year, especially after he pummeled high fastballs during his first month in the big leagues, when he hit eight home runs in 25 games.

He hit just six home runs in his final 44 games.

“When you start to have success against those pitches, they change the game plan,” he said. “A lot of great hitters need to adjust all the time. I focus on what I’m good at and keep working.”

Gelof said he doesn’t consider himself a leader, but simply tries to go about his business the right way and perhaps his teammates will follow. His big rookie year hasn’t changed his own expectations for himself, which he said are more process-based than focused on results.

His only goal: Be out there for 150 games.

“He had some good success last year, hopefully it carries over to this year,” Wood said. “He’ll be a big part of our team. He uses confidence, he knows he’s a good player but he’s also humble. It’ll be fun to see him come into his own in his first full season.”

He wants to help change the culture.

Wood, 33, will get the Opening Day start on Thursday at the Coliseum as the A’s kick off their 2024 season looking to improve after back-to-back 100-loss seasons.

“I’ve been to a lot of places where I’ve been able to win,” said Wood, whose teams have made the playoffs in seven of his 11 big league seasons. “I want to set the example of what that looks like on a day-to-day basis and what goes into it, to have a winning culture and build a winning program.”

The idea that the A’s will be anything but last-place finishers in the American League West for the third straight year requires a bit of optimism. The oddsmakers at DraftKings have the A’s over/under set to 57.5 wins this season, a big jump from the 50-112 record they finished with a year ago.

“I think that we’re definitely going to be better than what people are expecting,” Wood said. “We’ve been banged up a little bit but I think we’re going to play good baseball. We’ve got some good arms, some good young position players. I think we’ll be super competitive.”

Last year, the A’s used a franchise record 41 different pitchers while posting a league-worst 5.48 ERA.

They hope to have upgraded by signing Wood (career 3.74 ERA) to a one-year deal worth $8.5 million and trading for 34-year-old Ross Stripling (career 3.96 ERA). The veteran starters were part of a San Francisco Giants team that won 79 games last year and will now lead a battle tested A’s rotation that also includes JP Sears, 28, Paul Blackburn, 30, and Joe Boyle, 24.

Boyle, acquired in exchange for lefty Sam Moll in a midsummer trade with the Cincinnati Reds, is a flame-thrower who had one of the hardest average fastballs (98 mph) in baseball last year.

“In terms of experience, there are four guys leading the way and it’s a much better start than what we had last year,” said A’s manager Mark Kotsay. “Nothing against the guys we did start last year, but there’s a lot more experience on the mound, guys who understand how to manage the game and get through it, whether they have their best stuff or need to go compete.”

The A’s haven’t had an ace in years. Chris Bassitt is the last A’s starter to be worth at least 4.0 WAR (wins above replacement) when he threw 157-1/3 innings with a 3.15 ERA in 2021. Before him, there was Sonny Gray in 2015, Bartolo Colon in 2013 and Gio Gonzalez in 2011.

Wood, who was used as a swingman with the Giants last year, hasn’t made 30 starts since 2015 but has found a way to contribute, often pitching important innings for playoff teams in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Atlanta. He has a career 3.11 ERA in 21 postseason appearances.

Wood said he didn’t sign with Oakland so he could join a team with lower expectations and less pressure.

“It’s funny because there are two separate things as far as expectations individually and as a team,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what team you’re on, what the expectations are. There’s pressure on every individual in this clubhouse to succeed, play well and solidify themselves in their own careers. That helps to feed into where the team is heading.”

It’s the mindset that’s helping fuel a culture that Kotsay hopes will change in Year 3 under his management.

“They understand what it means to be big leaguers now,” Kotsay said. “This group came here, a lot of them, in survival mode. They are creating a culture together where they’re working out in the weight room together, they’re challenging each other on the field, challenging each other to put in the work. And yet have fun in the clubhouse together. That’s the best way to describe this culture.”

The rest of the league might not be expecting much of the A’s, but they’ve got their own expectations.

“The goals are always to win and have an opportunity to get to the postseason,” Kotsay said. “As an organization, where we were last year (losing 112 games), we understand that as a group. Our goal is to improve. And in our minds, make big improvements. Those are goals we want to set.

“This group has come together in spring training and started to build a culture. They’ve got some confidence.”

Mark Kotsay had just lost 112 games in his second season leading the worst team in the sport. With a two-year record of 110-214, his winning percentage now ranked among the worst in baseball history; among the 364 men to manage at least 320 games, Kotsay’s .340 mark is worse than all but three.

In some cities, fans would be calling for his resignation on a nightly basis. In Oakland, it’s not the manager the fans are screaming at.

Kotsay is beloved.

“I thought Mark and his staff did an incredible job this year of finding positives,” Forst said. “We’ve gone through back to back 100 loss seasons and come out of it with a manager who I think has done a fantastic job… That’s not always the case when you go through this.”

Forst praised Kotsay for his ability to teach the game to a roster that was full of first-timers and old-timers.

In two seasons the A’s have used 104 players, 56 of them rookies.

Not a single member of the A’s ranked in the 100 most valuable players in MLB last year, according to FanGraphs. Their most valuable player? Rookie Zack Gelof, who only played in 69 of the team’s 162 games.

Kotsay’s job in Oakland clearly isn’t to win games; it’s to develop players. Nobody expected the A’s, with an MLB-low opening day payroll of $56 million last year, to look competitive on the field.

“From a coaching standpoint, our objective is to stay positive through this process,” Kotsay said. “We understand where we’re at with the roster, the youth that’s on the roster… Our priority becomes teaching. That was the message from the beginning. That was to dive in and teach as much as possible, stay as positive as possible and focus on the small victories.”

Still, for Kotsay to survive the 2023 season, not only did he need to make sure the A’s seemed formidable once in a while, he also needed to make the Coliseum a place that players didn’t hate walking into every day.

The fans felt the opposite way; they weren’t even showing up. The A’s averaged less than 11,000 fans per game for the third consecutive year, a steep plummet from the nearly 25,000 they averaged just 10 years ago.

And when fans did show up, they showed up angrily. They held signs about how much they loathed team owner John Fisher and pleaded for him to sell the team.

Fisher was busy in Las Vegas, where in May, the A’s were able to convince politicians to give them $380 million in public funding for a new ballpark.

It was finally real: The A’s were leaving Oakland.

Kotsay’s job throughout all of this seemed almost impossible.

The players knew what was going on. They were playing in a ballpark that was crumbling, without facilities that came close in quality to just about every other team’s.

“I just work here,” veteran reliever Trevor May would say when asked about Fisher, who was paying his players less than any other owner in the league.

May also said this: “It’s about money for John Fisher. Let’s call it what it is.”

Kotsay, though, never lost the clubhouse, according to some of the most experienced players there.

They credited his poise and ability to help them focus on only what they could control.

“Mark probably downplays the impact it had on him and the coaching staff and the players,” Forst said of the distraction created by the team’s midseason announcement that it was moving to Vegas. “I was there, I sat in the stands, I know what it was like out there at times. For those guys on the field and in the dugout to be able to focus on what they’re doing… they did an incredible job of focusing on the game.”

On June 13, when more than 27,000 A’s fans showed up for a Tuesday night game against the Tampa Bay Rays in a reverse boycott, the players didn’t hide from the potential embarrassment of the moment.

Instead, they knocked off the Rays in an exciting 2-1 victory, extending their winning streak to seven in what was the highlight of the season for many.

“A lot of unselfish baseball on this team right now,” May said at the time.

Outfielder Tony Kemp said, “We’ve been gelling with each other. That chemistry takes a minute.”

When the eventual World Series winning Texas Rangers visited in June, their manager Bruce Bochy said Kotsay was doing a “great job” and will have a “good, long career” as a manager.

“Doesn’t matter what kind of club it is, they’ll play very hard,” Bochy said. “He’ll have these guys ready every day. That’s who Mark is. His work ethic as a player was off the chart.”

By the end of the season, the A’s were playing for nothing, but still fighting.

They won big games against playoff teams, then took two out of three against the Houston Astros in mid-September, then former A’s manager Bob Melvin brought his San Diego Padres into the Coliseum and said Kotsay had them playing their best baseball of the season.

“He’s doing a great job,” said Melvin, who’ll face Kotsay’s A’s twice this season as the new Giants manager. “They’ve played hard every inning of every game.”

After starting the year 10-45 (.181) with an 11-game losing streak, the A’s finished the year 40-67 (.374) over their final 107 games, more than doubling their winning percentage from the first 55.

Kotsay had done “a phenomenal job of keeping it light, raising that learning curve and helping us out,” said veteran Seth Brown.

In the end, the A’s finished 50-112, the 20th-worst record in MLB history. They looked at the glass as half-full.

In November, the A’s announced they were adding a year to Kotsay’s contract, guaranteeing an option that will keep him as their manager through at least 2025.

They’ll hope Kotsay can soon do what Brandon Hyde did in Baltimore, and Derek Shelton in Pittsburgh: survive some rough times through the rebuild until the team is ready to compete again.

Both Hyde’s Orioles and Shelton’s Pirates lost at least 100 games in their managers’ first two full seasons. Hyde then won 101 games, winning the American League East last year, while Shelton led the Pirates into contending position in mid-summer, but they sold off some productive players at the trade deadline to rebuild the team and ended with just 76 wins.

The A’s don’t project to contend anytime soon. They added some talent in the offseason, but figure to be among the worst teams yet again this season. They have no home field beyond 2024, their final year at the Coliseum. They have a heartbroken fanbase.

But at least one thing they feel good about.

“The first thing is I know we have a manager,” Forst said. “One who sets the tone in that clubhouse. I’m grateful for that.”

You can eavesdrop on the San Francisco Giants outfielders, chasing fly balls a few yards away. But on this warm summer day at Oracle Park, mostly what you hear is the excited chatter emanating from a handful of people sipping cocktails during batting practice.

This is the “Booze Cage,” surely the coolest place to be 2-½ hours before first pitch on any given night during the Giants’ season.

It’s a fenced off area of the warning track nestled against the right-field wall and it’s big enough for 15 or 20 people to stand against, watch pregame warmups and, for a minute or two, get lost in the fantasy of being a professional baseball player.

How do you get access to the “Booze Cage?” You probably can’t. Not unless you know a guy who knows a guy, who knows another guy who puts you on the waiting list, you wait six years and then maybe a spot opens up. Or better yet, a member you know uses a precious guest pass to make you a “pinch-hitter” for a night.

It’ll be one to remember.

“We didn’t know how cool this was going to be when we signed up,” said Shari DelCarlo, a LinkedIn director, a Giants season-ticket holder and one of the first members of the Gotham Club.

“We’re glad we signed up,” said Ron Johnson, a WorkDay exec and a fellow season-ticket holder and Gotham Club member. “It was a bit of faith up front. But the Giants don’t seem to half-ass things. They built it out.”

The Gotham Club opened in 2013, when the Giants formed the exclusive fan club in hopes to provide a luxurious experience.

It started with a few rooms behind the suites along the third base line. A secret door opens up, a host welcomes you and then you pick a direction.

To the left is the billiards room with a pool table and a TV, snacks and drinks, and a handful of original arcade games like Pac Man, Centipede, Donkey Kong and Galaga.

To the right is the bowling hall, with two professionally oiled lanes and automated pin resetters, a dart board, another TV and more snacks and drinks.

“But we couldn’t see the field,” Johnson said.

Soon, the Giants opened the Booze Cage, named after the Booze Cage of the Mission’s Recreation Field in the early 1900s, and the adjacent bar, a full-service restaurant and several seating areas with full views of the field.

The members-only entrance behind right field opens early, 2½ hours before game time, a full hour before most fans can get in. Members must have tickets to the game to enter.

Walk in and they’re greeted by a server who operates a bar next to the Booze Cage. After they get a drink, many walk straight onto the warning track to watch batting practice, while others head to the right, walk up the stairs and get a bird’s eye view of the field and a path to the full-service bar and dining room.

There are vintage posters and original photographs on the wall. The bar serves drinks such as the Polo Grounds Manhattan, the Humm Baby, the Kayak on the Water and, the most popular drink, the No. 24.

An ode to Willie Mays, the No. 24 consists of Bulleit Rye Whiskey, gum syrup, angostura and orange bitters served over ice shaped like a baseball. The bartender estimates they freeze 2,000 ice balls for each game. The entire Gotham Club only averages 300 guests per game – more for Opening Day and playoffs, of course. Still, do the math; the bar is busy.

Johnson and DelCarlo like to sit at a table near the bar. They get to most games about 90 minutes early and take a seat, say hello to their favorite server and then sit down with a drink.

“The regulars, we all love the Giants, so you can sit there and chat and it’s a nice feeling, a nice way to make friends,” DelCarlo said. “You can sit down and talk to almost anybody.”

She looked around. The Dodgers were in town that day. A few people wore Dodger blue.

“Sometimes you get Dodger fans in here,” she said. “People invite their friends.”

On days that are rainy or particularly cold, Johnson and DelCarlo might watch the entire game from the Gotham Club. On nice days, they’ll go to their seats in section 213 and watch from there.

In the dining room, two guests sit at a sunlit table overlooking the water behind the park. One of them is Lisa Pantages, the club’s chief financial officer and one of the founding members of the Gotham Club.

A fourth-generation San Franciscan and a season-ticket holder since 1987, Pantages once dreamed of working for the team one day. In 2003, it came true.

Now she gets to work around 9 a.m. and tries to finish by 5 p.m. so she can get down to the Gotham Club and meet her seatmates for dinner.

“I might as well be Norm (from “Cheers”),” Pantages said. “I have a drink named after me. I walk in the door and (the server) goes, ‘Lisa’s lemon drop?’ I start my evening with a lemon drop martini, no sugar.”

Everything in the Gotham Club, including the name, is in homage to Giants history. The team was originally named the New York Gothams when it was founded in 1885, then it changed to the Giants in 1885. The team moved to San Francisco in 1958.

In total, there are about 1,000 members of the Gotham Club, and a waiting list a mile long. They only admit about 25 new members each year, and they’re almost always referrals.

In 2023, the club did something unusual: it took in two people who weren’t referrals, a notable moment since those two people had been on the waiting list since 2016.

The initiation fee starts at $4,500 for individuals (access for a member plus one) and $15,000 for corporations (up to four rotating guests), plus annual dues between $2,500 and $7,000.

On any given night, members might see someone who works for the team, or someone who once played for the team. There are six Giants front office members who are paying members of the club. Former players Dave Dravecky and Will Clark are seen there most often.

Standing in the Booze Cage, current Giants outfielders can seem like familiar friends.

“It’s a fun little party,” DelCarlo said. “We’re glad we signed up.”

The A’s are traveling to Vegas once again as part of their spring training schedule and will play the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday night and Saturday afternoon in a pair of games at Las Vegas Ballpark. Plenty of tickets remain.

The 10,000-capacity stadium plays home to the Aviators, the Triple-A affiliate of the A’s, and was once considered a potential landing spot for the A’s before their new ballpark in Vegas is ready in 2028.

But plans change quickly. Much has already changed with the A’s this year. Here’s where things stand:

On those Las Vegas ballpark renderings

The A’s finally released renderings for their proposed ballpark this week, and while the pictures of what the A’s are calling a “spherical armadillo” are quite pretty, there were several questions that immediately came into play.

There are no bullpens or batter’s eye, and the giant window behind the outfield could present problems for the players. There’s only enough parking for 2,500 cars despite the stadium holding as many as 33,000 people. And it’s all to be built on nine acres of land at the site of the Tropicana, owned by Bally’s, alongside a brand-new resort.

RELATED: Borenstein: Dealing with the A’s, city should stop swinging for the fences, take back control of the Coliseum

David Samson, the former president of the Montreal Expos and Florida Marlins who was involved with relocation efforts for both teams, was not impressed. He said the renderings weren’t particularly realistic.

“Renderings are certainly not construction documents,” he said by phone this week. “I think we’re all waiting to see the public agreements that get signed between the A’s and the public entities in Nevada, and the agreement between them and Bally’s, how that’s going to work. I think nine acres is tight. Not that it’s not doable but it’s tight.”

Samson is skeptical of the timing the A’s have to work with. When the Marlins built a new park in Miami in 2012, it took 36 months of construction.

“Before that, you need a year to get those documents in order,” he said.

The A’s have yet to reveal any construction documents that would be publicly available once finalized.

The A’s chose to go with a fixed roof rather than a retractable roof, which couldn’t have fit on nine acres.

The Tropicana hotel will close on April 2 as the site is prepared for construction. The idea that the Vegas ballpark could open in 2028 might be a stretch, Samson said.

“Time is an issue,” he said.

Where’s the money coming from?

While Nevada approved $350 million of public funding for the new ballpark, obstacles to the A’s getting that funding remain.

Schools Over Stadiums, a political action group formed by a teachers’ union in Nevada, is still waiting to hear from the state’s supreme court about language in a petition that could put the public funding on the ballot in November. The teachers had hoped to begin collecting signatures this month and turn them in by June.

“We need a good three months,” spokesperson Alex Marks said recently.

There’s a stadium authority meeting planned for March 21, when the teachers are considering filing an injunction to ask the courts to put a pause on the funding.

As for the remaining money of the $1.5 billion expected cost of the new ballpark, A’s owner John Fisher told the San Francisco Chronicle this week that $200 million will be debt, $500 million will be provided by Fisher and $500 million would come from investors who have not yet been determined.

What’s the latest on the Coliseum?

The A’s lease at the Coliseum will expire after the 2024 season and the A’s are still unsure where they’d play after that. Triple-A ballparks in Sacramento and Salt Lake City are being considered.

The A’s will have a second meeting with local officials on March 14 to continue negotiating a potential lease extension, and both sides are “exploring all options,” said one official.

The Coliseum has since taken down its “Rooted in Oakland” signage.

This Friday, the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority has a special board meeting in which the topic of the Oakland Roots playing at the Coliseum will be discussed.

The A’s have also started talking with the African-American Sports and Entertainment Group about selling the team’s half of the Coliseum property.

What are A’s fans doing?

After the smashing success of Fans Fest, a fan-created festival at Jack London Square two weekends ago, fans have turned their attention to a boycott of Opening Day on March 28. They plan to meet in the parking lot and tailgate, but not buy tickets to attend the game.

As for Fans Fest, Samson said other MLB teams would have a right to be upset that the A’s are continuously putting in little effort to connect with their fanbase, particularly when there’s revenue at stake. He said big-market teams would get frustrated with revenue sharing recipients if they aren’t trying hard enough to make their own revenue.

“I was surprised the A’s didn’t have their own fan fest, especially given all the negative attention happening in Oakland,” Samson said. “There would be ways to do it. Being a little more understanding of what the fans are going through and trying to let it be known that even if it’s one more year, three more years, 20 more years, what matters is now. And it seems as though it’s not the path that’s being taken.”

The 33,000-seat park will be enclosed by a roof but will feature “the world’s largest cable-net glass window” to allow for natural light and views of the strip.

The architects, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and HNTB, are calling the stadium a “spherical armadillo” because of the roof’s overlapping layers.

In a press release, A’s owner John Fisher called it a “truly innovative and bold design while ensuring an unmatched fan experience. We hope to add to the dynamic atmosphere and liveliness of the Las Vegas Strip, creating a welcoming environment for all of Southern Nevada.”

The $1.5-billion project will be built on 9 acres of the 35-acre Tropicana site. The small space doesn’t allow for a retractable roof, but the A’s are hoping to counteract that with the large window facing the strip beyond the outfield. The roof will limit direct sunlight and heat.

“Our design for the new Vegas home for the A’s is conceived in response to the unique culture and climate of the city,’” said Bjarke Ingels, founder and creative director of BIG. “Five pennant arches enclose the ballpark-shading from the Nevada sun while opening to the soft daylight from the north. A giant window frames a majestic view of the life of the Strip and the iconic New York New York hotel skyline. All direct sunlight is blocked, while all the soft daylight is allowed to wash the field in natural light.

“The resultant architecture is like a spherical armadillo – shaped by the local climate – while opening and inviting the life of the strip to enter and explore. In the city of spectacle, the A’s ‘armadillo’ is designed for passive shading and natural light – the architectural response to the Nevada climate generating a new kind of vernacular icon in Vegas.”

The stadium will be tiered into upper and lower seating bowls with no restricted views. The club also hopes to build an 18,000-square-foot jumbotron, which would be the largest in MLB.

One big question is the parking. The plan only supports 2,500 on-site parking spots, fewer than one spot per 10 fans if the ballpark is at capacity. For comparison, NFL stadiums tend to require one spot per three fans. The 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium has 31,000 parking spots for 69,000 capacity.

The A’s are hoping to work with the county on traffic and transportation plans and are considering an express bus service like the ones used for T-Mobile Arena and Allegiant Stadium.

The ballpark is scheduled to open in 2028.

The announcement of the renderings comes a few days before the A’s travel to Las Vegas for a pair of exhibition games against the Milwaukee Brewers at Las Vegas Ballpark, the 10,000-capacity home of the Triple-A Aviators. The A’s and Brewers will play there on Friday and Saturday.