QUEENS, NY — New York Mets pitcher Paul Blackburn will be the first to tell you that he is not the biggest fan of his former club, the Athletics, moving from Oakland and making a three-year pit stop in Sacramento before settling permanently in Las Vegas in 2028.
“I’m a little biased when it comes to the move, when it comes to Sacramento,” Blackburn, who was dealt to the Mets at last season’s trade deadline from the Athletics, told amNewYork. “I grew up going to games there. I debuted with them. I have a lot of memories of Oakland. So I’m very pro-Oakland in that sense.”
The 31-year-old right-hander was born in Antioch, CA, 31 miles outside of Oakland, and attended high school in Brentwood, roughly an hour-and-a-half drive to the Oakland Coliseum.
After being drafted by the Chicago Cubs in 2012 and traded to the Seattle Mariners in July of 2016, he was flipped just four months later to his hometown A’s, where he made his MLB debut a year later and then spent seven-plus seasons.
But he has plenty of experience dealing with the Athletics’ new, temporary digs. Their interim home at Sutter Health Park, home of the Triple-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, played host to numerous Blackburn minor-league starts while he was with the Atheltics’ Triple-A affiliate in Las Vegas.
“It’s definitely different,” he said. “I’ve seen highlights from their games in Sacramento, and it’s just such a weird feel. I played a lot of Triple-A games in that stadium, too. So it could be a little bit of that. I think it’s just a different feel, just kind of seeing that. I haven’t really talked to anybody over there, but I’ve seen little things that have been said in the media from guys over there. I could imagine that it’s definitely different, a different type of atmosphere.”
The Mets will get their first taste of Sacramento and Sutter Health Park, which holds just 14,000 fans, beginning on Friday when they visit the A’s for a three-game set. While Blackburn will not be making the trip with the team to visit his old friends as he continues to recover from a knee injury, he at least has some intel on the ballpark, which has been “playing a little small compared to how Oakland played.”
“Compared to the rest of the league, that was the one place you wanted to go as a pitcher,” Blackburn said. “You throw Vegas in there, you throw Albuquerque, Reno, Salt Lake, all those places have a really high altitude and the ball flies a little bit. So going to Sacramento was kind of a breather, per se. But from what I’ve seen from the box score, I feel like it’s playing a little small.”
The park is 330 feet down the left-field line, 403 feet to dead center, and 325 feet down the right-field line, with 18 home runs hit in its first 12 games. Only Yankee Stadium, Angel Stadium, and Dodger Stadium are averaging more home runs per game this season.
“You’re going to go there and see that the ball is going to fly a little bit,” Blackburn said. “But it’s still baseball, you still have to square it up. You have to make your pitches as a pitcher and not really worry about that stuff.”
This could be an opportunity for the Mets’ offense to gain some consistent momentum. They hit just two home runs in their six-game homestand at Citi Field and are below league average with 3.75 runs scored per game.
