Outside The Confines: You can take the A’s out of Oakland

Oakland Athletics fans showed up en masse this week in a reverse boycott protest to prove that despite what ownership may try to claim, fans have not been the primary problem for Oakland.

The demonstration hopes to show the fan devotion to the team, and the history of Oakland baseball in an attempt to keep the team in the Bay Area rather than following through on a plan to move to Las Vegas.

On the plus side of this, whether ownership actually learns anything, the team is donating all the revenue from the game to local charities.

• For some additional reading, here’s a piece by Noah Frank on the reverse boycott.

Now stepping out of Oakland, we head to the rest of today’s links!

• I said out of Oakland, but there is some other A’s news as the Nevada Senate passed a bill this week to help fund a new Athletics stadium in Vegas. Story by Jeff Passan.
• Jay Jaffe would like to report that Nick Castellanos is mashing once again.
• Stephanie Apstein also wrote about Castellanos but looked instead at how his defense has changed.
• Brandon Drury was suspended for one game after making contact with an umpire during an argument. (ESPN)
• It seems like Liam Hendriks just made it back to the majors only to be placed on the 15-day IL. Scott Merkin looks at his timeline to return.
• This just in: an insanely rich baseball owner thinks the problem is that other billionaires don’t want to spend as much as him. Story by Stephanie Apstein.
• Jesse Rogers looks at the surprising ways Luis Arraez is making a run at a .400 season.
• David Laurila speaks with 13 pitchers about their feelings on the pitch clock.
• Tom Verducci writes about Jacob deGrom’s future, and how his road to Cooperstown was cut short by repeated injury.
• Thomas Harrigan takes an early look at the unsurprising MVP favorites for this season.
• Michael Baumann is going to explain why batting average is for suckers.
• Andy Nesbitt shares why talk-show host Bill Maher actually loves the new baseball rule changes.

**Normally I would include links from The Athletic, and I will resume sharing them next week, but considering the decision of The Athletic to lay off some of the incredible MLB writers who I frequently share work from here, I will not post anything from them this week.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster. Make it so.