Tour 2025: Sutter Health Park

All photos of Sacramento, West Sacramento, and Sutter Health Park available on Flickr.

Erik and I are still going strong in Tour Plus Year 17 and just returned from Northern California!  The centerpiece of our trip this year was to Sacramento to visit the temporary home of the roaming Athletics, thus securing our spots back in the prestigious 30 Ballpark Club.  It was another year of flying cross-country for Erik, and I beat him to Sacramento by a couple of hours.  I learned from my experience last year reading a book for 2 hours in a Seattle parking lot that I needed a more concrete plan while waiting for Erik to arrive, so I used my down time this year to have lunch with an old high school friend.  He lives one city over in Woodland, and it was great to catch up over a couple beers and what he told me was the delicacy of the region - tri-tip sandwiches.  I picked up Erik at SMF around 3pm and we pre-gamed at Drake's Barn, a beer garden near the ballpark.  This was actually randomly my 2nd visit to Sacramento within the last calendar year, so I had been to Drake's once before on my last trip with my family, and knew it would be a great place to cool down in the Sac-Town heat, as the open air space is surrounded by water misters.  We both enjoyed refreshing frozen tropical slushies and then went to check in at our hotel quick before heading to the game.  We stayed at the Embassy Suites right across the iconic Tower Bridge from the ballpark, and it was a fantastic setup that featured "free" happy hour every day.  Naturally, we took full advantage of this, and were pleasantly surprised to see many Twins fans (the A's opponent) as well as residual Oakland fans staying at our hotel.  It was then a beautiful walk across the lift bridge for a 7:05pm first pitch.

Sutter Health Park is just over the Sacramento River in West Sacramento, and opened for business in 2000.  It seated just over 10,000 when the AAA River Cats were the primary tenant, but it was expanded to about 14,000 in order to accommodate the MLB Athletics.  This expansion is primarily in the form of premium and club level seating, in an effort to make this ballpark look and feel as much as possible like a major league park.  A large new standalone A's clubhouse was built in left field, as I'm sure the River Cats who are the top affiliate of the rival Giants weren't too keen on sharing theirs.  The other major noticeable addition was a MLB-grade jumbotron on the right field berm.  This screen provides fans with the visual and audio gameday experience that MLB fans expect, but it unfortunately comes at the cost of partially blocking the skyline view to the bridge and downtown.  This would be akin to blocking the view of the Roberto Clemente Bridge in Pittsburgh, although the other famous part of the city skyline - The Ziggurat - is still plainly visible beyond left-center.  Comically, the former scoreboard was not removed but simply covered with green tarps, and it is a glaring reminder of the transience of this situation, especially for residents of Sacramento.  Most of the locals we talked to that night, including one Bay Area reporter, expressed somewhere between indifference and anger towards the situation.  The A's are not shying away from this being a brief stop in their supposed move to Vegas, and have even branded their uniforms and the outfield walls with "Las Vegas" advertising.  It's one thing for them to be upfront about it being temporary, but another thing to border on completely disregarding Sacramento entirely.  There is little to no recognition anywhere in or on the ballpark, uniforms, team website, or team store that ties the City of Sacramento to the Athletics franchise, save for a tiny sleeve patch on the team's jerseys.  I was told that the homestand we were at was the first time that any team merchandise saying "Sacramento" was even for sale, and many people have taken to cleverly making their own or buying counterfeit merchandise.  It's pretty sad and confusing that this franchise has gone from burning one bridge in Oakland right into another in Sacramento (no pun intended), and then will be expecting a tourist city in the desert to welcome them with open arms in a few years.  The Athletics (as they are officially called - again with no Sacramento reference) clearly only stayed in Northern California to maintain their TV deal, but if they don't get into people's good graces soon while they're still there, nobody is even going to watch them on TV anymore anyways.

It might seem like I went off on a little bit of a tangent there, but you can't talk about Sutter Health Park and the A's without talking about how they got there.  It all adds to the vibe and the atmosphere at the ballpark, and it tells a story that is important to understanding the ballpark in its current form.  Had we been here for just a regular ol' River Cats game last year, we likely would have had a completely different experience.  Now when you add in the park enhancements, the additional MLB tenant, the general sentiment around town, and sprinkle in a random hodgepodge of visitors with varying degrees of fandom, it really felt like a Spring Training game more than anything else.  It was a great place to watch a game since it was very casual and intimate, and certainly nicer than most other minor league or spring training parks, but it never felt like we were actually watching regular season major league baseball.  We spent a lot of our time standing in the tree-canopied right field berm and the left field tented beer garden, both of which are staples at Spring Training but something you would rarely see at a real 4-deck MLB park.  I will say that I appreciate the effort that went into enhancing the fan experience.  The A's just as easily could have left well enough alone and pulled in a trailer for the team clubhouse, and nobody would have been surprised.  A ribbon board was added and every audio-visual effort was made to make this feel like major league baseball, both in person and on TV.  Concessions were massively upgraded, and Erik and I both ate and drank very well during our 6+ hours at the ballpark.  The brisket sliders I had were one of the biggest "bangs for your buck" I've ever seen at a baseball game.  If you were at this park completely ignorant of what level of baseball this was and that the team was leaving in 3 years, you wouldn't be disappointed.  But it's impossible to separate the two in Sacramento, and it was sort of a cloud over our time there.  We thoroughly enjoyed the two games we attended, but there was no mistaking the odd feeling that is unmatched anywhere else in MLB.

Our first game of this trip was Wednesday night against our adopted hometown Twins, which was game 3 of a 4-game set.  Coincidentally this was our 2nd year in a row following the Twins on the road, and double-coincidentally, the Twins had just arrived in Sac-town from Seattle.  Zebby Matthews got the ball and the win for Minnesota, who I think is still technically a rookie or close to it.  He was about as adequate as you can expect from a starting pitcher these days, giving up 1 run over 5 innings.  Catcher and All-Star candidate Ryan Jeffers got the Twins out to an early lead with a solo shot in the 1st, and that lead was later extended to 3-0 with a Harrison Bader 2-run homer in the 5th.  The A's employed an opener in Justin Sterner, and Jeffrey Springs was the "bulk pitcher," giving up just 3 earned runs in 6 2/3 with 7 Ks.  The home team could not muster up any offense aside from a Jacob Wilson RBI single in the 5th and lost by a score of 6-1.  The A's started off the year exceeding expectations but have free-fallen back to reality, with only 1 win in their last 20 games as of that night.  They would go on to win on Thursday afternoon to salvage some assemblage of dignity and avoid the sweep.  This was the Athletics' final weekday afternoon home game of the season before the triple-digit Sacramento heat swoops in for the summer.  It wasn't quite that hot on Thursday, but hot enough for a few balls to be absolutely obliterated, including a 3-run shot by "The Other" Max Muncy that cleared the clubhouse building in left.  We were sitting right behind the 1st base dugout at Thursday's game, and that homer was like watching a golf ball sail off a tee.  Jacob Wilson also homered and Tyler Soderstrom homered twice for the A's, and Matt Wallner added a bomb of his own for the visitors in the 4th.  The final score was 14-3 and the Twins were never really in the game.  We watched the entirety of David Festa's weird and elaborate warmup routine in the bullpen, which involved throwing a variety of colored balls against a wall, but it did not seem to give him any advantages when having to throw real pitches in the game as he got shelled for 8 of the 14 runs.  Every single Twins reliever gave up at least one run as well, including third baseman Jonah Bride who came in to pitch the final two frames.  He proved just as useless on the mound as he is in the field.  My biggest observation from these two games is that Jacob Wilson is going to be an absolute stud for the A's.  The guy's bat-to-ball skills are incredible and I think he had 5 hits in the 2 games we were at.  He was hitting .363 as of Thursday and I would be shocked if he is not the team's all-star representative, as well as a front runner for Rookie of the Year.

Between Wednesday night's game and Thursday afternoon's game, we hit up a cool bar in Old Town called Honey and the Trapcat, where we met locals and out-of-towners alike, and had a great time chatting with the mixologist who invented some tasty cocktails for us.  Thursday we spent some time walking around the river and The Ziggurat before the game, which is a local landmark that was originally designed for a bank but is now appropriately a government building.  We walked to check out and pick up our car following Thursday's matinee, and immediately headed south for Stockton for the next leg of our trip.

Note: for my rankings below, I'm viewing this as a major league ballpark and comparing it as such.  If you look at this ballpark through the lens of a AAA park, the numbers are probably a bit higher when compared to other minor league parks.

park rankings and statistics:

aesthetics - 3 (front entry is nice, the barbed wire fencing and loading on 3 sides is off-putting)
views from park - 8 (ziggurat and Tower Bridge, partially obstructed)
view to field - 8 (obviously very close compared to MLB, but fencing obstructions down the lines)
surrounding area - 6 (not much in West Sac but Old Town is across the river)
food variety - 7
nachos - 3
beer - 6 (bonus points for beer garden)
vendor price - 8 (pricy, but good value for what you get)
ticket price - 2 (not surprisingly pretty steep for the limited quantity of seats)
atmosphere - 3
walk to park - 8 (park across the bridge)
parking price/proximity - 7 (we parked at hotel but seemed to be ample street parking for a bit of a walk)
concourses - 3 (the only non-360° concourse you'll find in MLB)
team shop - 2 (major points deducted for limited Sacramento merch)

kids area - 5

best food - tacos
most unique stadium feature - for an MLB park, the outfield berm is very unique
best jumbotron feature - crazy cap shuffle with multiple rounds of added caps

best between-inning feature - broadcasters throw balls into crowd from booth in the 8th

field dimensions - 330/403/325

starters - Zebby Matthews (MIN) v. Justin Sterner (ATH); David Festa v. Mitch Spence
opponent - Minnesota Twins
time of game - 2:30; 2:33
attendance - 9211; 8877
score - 6-1 L; 14-3 W

Brewers score that day - 9-1 W; off

STANDINGS AND UPCOMING SERIES AS OF 6/9/25:

Brewers 35-31, -5.5; 3 v. Braves, 4 v. Cardinals

Twins 35-30, -7.0; 3 v. Rangers, 3 @ Astros
Athletics 26-41, -11.0; 3 @ Angels, 3 @ Royals

2025 GAMES ATTENDED:

Erik - 6
Peter - 14