Not to be a wet blanket, but from all appearances this was the prudent thing to do. No one around here ever thought this was something imminent. Obviously, it would be fool-hardy to hold a public vote before territorial rights are figured out. check out http://newballpark.blogspot.com/2009/06/san-jose-public-vote-pushed-back-to.html from someone who’s been following the story.

A’s to San Jose is never going to happen.

MLB has absolutely no reason to even consider carving SJ out of the Giants’ territory unless the City of San Jose makes an offer MLB can’t refuse.  If San Jose wants to wait for MLB to move first, it will have to wait forever.

A few facts to keep in mind while too many commentators think about this issue in terms of irrelevant “fairness” considerations:

- Changing the territorial rights would require a very significant financial compensation package for the Giants.  When the Nats moved to DC, the Orioles received a massive compensation deal, including ownership of an RSN with exclusive TV rights for the Nats and a huge MLB guarantee of the future sale price of the Orioles.  And that case didn’t even involve any territorial rights infringement. 

—All or nearly all of the money to compensate the Giants is going to have to come from the San Jose taxpayer.  The Orioles’ package was effectively subsidized by DC’s 100% financing of Nationals Park. In San Jose, they are talking about providing land for the A’s to build their own park.  That will never cut it with Selig and DuPuy.

—San Jose taxpayers are highly unlikely to support any public funding of an A’s ballpark. 

Thus, SJ can table the issue for now as a face-saving measure.  But the hard truth is that MLB has implicitly encouraged SJ’s efforts to create leverage against Oakland (or non-Bay Area cities) willing to build the A’s a park.  If SJ ever steps up an offers a DC-type deal for the A’s, then MLB may actually revisit the territorial rights issue and let the deal happen.  Short of that, A’s-to-San Jose is just idle chatter for columnists and politicians.

Vegas will happen because it is the biggest market without a team that is capable of supporting one. The casinos will support it because they are trying to sell Vegas as a family destination. They will set up programs where the kids will be taken to the game so the parents can gamble and drink. Sure it’s hot, no hotter than Arlington Texas, or Miami.

Considering nothing but the market strength, MLB would be far better off adding third teams to New York and Southern California than going to any of the small open markets, none of which are really ready or suitable for major league baseball.

That will never happen though because of, um, Territorial Rights. 

Thus, the A’s are likely to stay in limbo for 5-10 years or more.