Report: A's could be stripped of revenue-sharing dollars

Major League Baseball's collective bargaining agreement will expire on Dec. 1, and with potential changes on the horizon, the Oakland Athletics could lose their cut of revenue sharing.

Oakland is in danger of losing some, or all, of its revenue-sharing money, which totaled $34 million last season, according to sources of the San Francisco Chronicle's Susan Slusser.

The revenue-sharing system helps balance competition by redistributing income from rich teams to poor teams, but Slusser writes "there are many in the union" who believe the Athletics aren't correctly using this money to improve their team.

"That’s definitely been a topic," a Players Association source told Slusser.

Slusser writes that Oakland is under fire for continually trading away popular players - to save money - and for its inability to find a site for a new stadium. Revenue-sharing money can also be used for items such as adding scouts or front-office staff, improving technology systems, and signing international players.

"There is leeway to justify other expenditures," a union official told Slusser. "But if a team shows no progress year after year and most of the revenue-sharing spending is on non-major-league salaries, red flags go up. There are clubs that other clubs look at and say, ‘What are they doing? Is this really the best use of our money?'"

Oakland's opening-day payroll was $87 million, but the team later traded away Josh Reddick, Rich Hill, Coco Crisp, and Marc Rzepczynski, finishing last in the AL West for a second consecutive season.