The Town is no stranger to good baseball. Four World Series championships, six American League pennants, enough Hall of Famers to fill the Oakland estuary — there is a rich history here that got boxed up after last season and shipped unceremoniously to Sacramento, the temporary home of what used to be the Oakland Athletics.
With the A’s went any chance of Oakland seeing a winning pro baseball team again. Or so it had appeared.
Ten months after the final Coliseum homestand, the city has a baseball team reaching heights not seen since the Athletics’ last World Series, in 1989. A couple months into their second season, the Oakland Ballers are sitting at 46-16 and have already clinched their spot in the Pioneer League playoffs by claiming the league’s best first-half record. (They were bounced out of the first round of the playoffs last year.) For those keeping score at home, the A’s are 48-63, the second-worst record in the American League.
“We got close to winning the championship in year one, but this year we want to do it,” Ballers cofounder Paul Freedman said. “We obviously haven’t done it yet, so there is still work to be done. But admittedly, it is surprising the pace that we’re on right now. To win 75% of our games or whatever it is right now is kind of ridiculous.”
At the core of this success? A cadre of ballplayers from Northern California who are reveling in the chance to play professional baseball close to their hometown. Nine players on the current roster were raised around these parts, among them the team’s best performers.
Making the pitch
After announcing the team in November 2023, seven months before the start of the season, the Ballers were left with little time to assemble an organization from scratch. They needed to hire a staff and line up promotions, to say nothing of building a new stadium and filling out a roster. This last task proved to be an issue for the front office. It turns out it’s not easy to recruit talent to a team that, at that point, didn’t really exist beyond a press release.
The Ballers at their season opener. The team has nine players on the roster from Northern California. Credit: Jose Fermoso/The Oaklandside
“We certainly were handcuffed,” Ballers assistant general manager Tyler Petersen said. “There’s a reason that teams like to announce themselves earlier than we did.” He recalled talking to players a month before the Ballers’ official announcement. The sales pitch could get a little weird, as he characterized it: “We don’t exist yet, and also you can’t tell anybody about us recruiting you, but we will exist, and please play for us.”
Still, the front office managed to put together a team that was good enough to earn a playoff spot in the Ballers’ debut season. “Now, everybody here has worked in minor league baseball after a year, so I think there’s just a greater appreciation for how hard it is to pull this thing off,” Petersen said. “What we did in our first year, I think everyone is tremendously proud of.”
Going into their second season, the Ballers, now a known quantity, were well positioned to approach players who would fit the team the best — and they made a point to focus on talent from the region.
“Last year, we challenged the organization to try to get more homegrown players,” Freedman said. This was in line with the spirit of the club, which introduced a unique fan ownership structure last year as a corrective to the top-down model typical across professional sports, the better to keep the team actually rooted in Oakland.
“If we’re going to be a community team, it’s great to represent that at every level,” Freedman said.
Ballers fans at the season opener. Credit: Amaya Edwards for The Oaklandside
The pitch for the local ballplayers was simple, in Petersen’s telling: Come play at home in front of your friends and family. It didn’t hurt that teams in the Pioneer League pay players a stipend that aligns with the state’s minimum wage laws, meaning that playing for the Ballers — one of two California teams in an otherwise Mountain West league — is a better gig than most of their peers.
“If you have a guy from Danville or Berkeley or even Modesto, all three cities which are represented on our roster, you can say: ‘Hey, listen, you want to be playing professional baseball, which is us. You wanna be playing in a big market that can help you get seen, which is here, and by the way, you’re going to get paid the most in the league, and probably play in front of your family,” said Petersen, himself a Bay Area native.
“Those are all things which do make it an easier sell.”
‘Like we’re kids again’
The Ballers’ Northern California contingent comprises pitchers James Colyer (Hayward), Brody Eglite (Martinez), Luke Short (San Jose), and Connor Sullivan (Martinez), along with outfielder Michael O’Hara (Danville) and infielder Esai Santos (Berkeley). Widen the net a little and you could include the trio of infielder Christian Almanza and catchers Dillon Tatum and Tyler Lozano, all from Stockton.
Almanza and Tatum have been playing baseball together since the third grade. The pair split up for college, with Almanza heading to St. Mary’s and Tatum making for UC Irvine. Reunited in Oakland, they now lead the Ballers’ offensive attack, combining for 35 home runs and 126 RBI.
On July 22, Almanza, a tall, lanky first baseman who owns the single-season and career home run records at his alma mater, slugged three bombs en route to a 12-8 Ballers victory over the Colorado Springs Sky Sox.
“It feels like we’re kids again,” Almanza said.
In the Pioneer League, where most of the teams play in the thin air of the Mountain states, offense tends to carry the day. But the Ballers play at sea level, where pitchers can get more movement on their breaking balls and where a marine layer has a damping effect on deep fly balls.
The Ballers targeted pitchers in their recruiting, and in a league with constant roster churn, it’s notable that they retained seven of them from the 2024 team. The result of their efforts this year is the Pioneer League’s best pitching staff. Oakland is the only team in the league with an ERA under 5, at 4.40, and a couple of former Cal teammates are leading the charge for the team’s staff.
Southpaw Luke Short was the team’s Opening Day starter and sparkled throughout the season, until an injury put him on the shelf. Across 10 starts, the San Jose native struck out 58 batters in 50 and one-third innings, putting up an ERA of 3.58. The other Golden Bear prowling Raimondi Park is the team’s closer, Connor Sullivan. The Stockton native currently leads the league in saves with 12 and has a 4.82 ERA across 28.0 innings.
“For a lot of these guys, it takes the pressure off,” Sullivan said about playing at home. “You’re doing something you’ve done your whole life, so having familiar faces in the crowd and not being super far from home is honestly a relief.”
The Ballers have already secured their spot in the playoffs, but they aren’t slowing down anytime soon. With a record of 20-6 in July, the team is rolling into the second half of the season. Thirty-six years after its last World Series, Oakland might have another title winner on its hands.
“Oakland is a championship city,” Freedman said. “Every professional sports team that has been here at this level has won a championship, and we haven’t yet. We want to add to that.”
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