Rob Manfred says A’s had no choice but to leave. Oakland disagrees.

NEW YORK – Hours after the Nevada legislature passed the bill the Oakland Athletics needed to help fund a new stadium for a move to Las Vegas, Rob Manfred said though he hates what a potential move would do to Oakland fans, he also believes owner John Fisher had little choice.

“I do not like this outcome. I understand why they feel the way they do. I think the real question is, ‘What is it that Oakland was prepared to do?’ There is no Oakland offer. They never got to the point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site,” Manfred said Thursday at league owners meetings in New York. “It’s not just John Fisher. You don’t build a stadium based on club activity alone. The community has to provide support. And at some point you come to the realization it’s just not going to happen.”

Within an hour or so of those comments, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao’s spokeswoman released a statement in response.

“This is just totally false,” Julie Edwards said. “There was a very concrete proposal under discussion and Oakland had gone above and beyond to clear hurdles, including securing funding for infrastructure, providing an environmental review, and working with other agencies to finalize approvals.”

The exchange was the latest escalation of a messy feud festering for years among the team, the league and the city. Fisher, with the league’s backing, has made it clear he does not believe his team can succeed financially in Oakland, a stance that has been laid bare as he has hunted for a replacement for the dilapidated Oakland Coliseum.

Many Athletics fans, who watched Fisher sink the payroll to league-low levels and trade away every star the team develops because the cost of keeping them is too high, have concluded he is trying to prove he cannot survive in that market so he can take the team to a city that will give him more for a new stadium.

Fisher does not regularly address the media and has not done so for years. But Manfred has defended Fisher, arguing he is working under difficult financial circumstances, even as the league pays out millions in revenue sharing to his franchise every year.

“The reality is the A’s ownership had insisted on a multibillion-dollar, 55-acre project that included a ballpark residential, commercial and retail space. In Las Vegas, for whatever reason, they seem satisfied with a 9-acre leased ballpark on leased land,” Thao’s spokeswoman said. “If they had proposed a similar project in Oakland, we feel confident a new ballpark would already be under construction. Oakland showed its commitment to the A’s, and that is why the A’s belong in Oakland.”

For years, the A’s and the city of Oakland explored a plan to put a ballpark at Howard Terminal, a process that went so far as to garner a page on the Port of Oakland’s website that includes a timeline of the project’s progress and detailed renderings. The A’s had not, however, secured the level of public funding from Oakland that they did from Las Vegas. That, the city argues, is because the Athletics were not willing to scale down their requests.

A new ballpark is not under construction in Las Vegas yet, even though the funding bill passed the state legislature and is expected to be signed into law soon.

“It’s another important step forward,” Manfred said, “but there is a pretty thorough relocation process that the club has to go through.”

That process will take time, and the move is not a sure thing. The A’s must figure out how they plan to finance their share of the stadium project, file an application for relocation, and wait for an owners’ committee to review it. After that, the owners must vote to approve the move. No owners addressed the media Thursday, but Manfred said their preference is usually to keep teams where they are.

“It has always been baseball’s policy and preference to stay put. I think that always colors any conversation about relocation,” Manfred said. “Having said that, I think the owners as a whole understand that there has been a multiyear, approaching a decade, effort, where for the vast majority of the time the sole focus was Oakland.”

Asked if he has concerns about moving a team with possible financial troubles to a smaller media market – with a proposal for a smaller ballpark that would allow fewer ticket sales – Manfred said it would be unfair to discuss that at this point.

“They deserve to file their relocation application,” Manfred said. “When I have all of the information in that application, if and when I see concerns, I’ll talk about that publicly.”