The safe bet going into any Oakland A’s offseason is that they’re not going to spend much money. Even when they’re contending and looking to make additions, the moves tend to be relatively modest. This is not news.
Furthermore, there has long been an expectation that spending would be down all around the league this winter. The 2020 season was nearly wiped out by the coronavirus pandemic, and fans weren’t able to buy tickets to attend the shortened schedule of games, cutting deeply into revenues with no guarantee that 2021 will be fully back to normal. We, and fans of many other teams, were all prepared for bad tidings on the payroll.