A's fans are convinced that Esteury Ruiz and Brent Rooker were punished for showing support to ownership protestors

The Oakland Athletics were the worst team in baseball last season and very much look the part once again in 2024. But for as awful as their on-field performance has been the past two years, the team’s ownership led by John Fisher has been even worse when it comes to alienating fans.

And now, even personnel decisions are raising questions in Oakland.

On Monday, the A’s made the decision to option outfielder Esteury Ruiz down to Triple-A despite his team-leading .429 average and 1.232 OPS a few games into the season. Plus, anyone who caught any of the A’s last season could see that Ruiz — an electric base stealer — was arguably their best player. The team also opted to bench Brent Rooker who started the season 0 for 11.

While Rooker’s benching somewhat makes sense (though a bit reactionary to a small sample size given he was an All-Star last year), Ruiz’s demotion was straight-up baffling. A’s fans, though, think they figured out why.

Both players had worn Last Dive Bar bracelets to show support to fans protesting the apparent relocation to Las Vegas and Fisher’s awful tenure as owner.

A’s general manager attempted to explain the Ruiz demotion as purely a baseball decision to make way for Tyler Nevin on the active roster. But the actual explanation seemed a bit odd, considering Ruiz has looked as good as any A’s player this season. And he’s only had one strikeout in eight plate appearances and has had no problem getting on base.

Manager Mark Kotsay even claimed that Ruiz wasn’t initially supposed to make the Opening Day roster.

While it’s important to note that neither player wore the bracelets during games this season, the moves were enough to raise suspicions amongst A’s fans.