A's courting free agents amid move to minor league park

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Luis Severino joined a videoconference on the Friday after Thanksgiving with an Athletics contingent that hoped to make him not only the ace of their staff, but one of the biggest, most consequential additions in franchise history. He was receptive but skeptical.

"I had a lot of questions," Severino recalled in Spanish. "Lots and lots."

A's general manager David Forst sat alongside manager Mark Kotsay and a handful of other staffers while Severino probed them about the direction of a team that lost 307 games over the past three years, the dynamics of the minor league ballpark they'll call home for the next three seasons and the intentions of a franchise…