A’s 2025 schedule is out. When will MLB stars arrive for first season in West Sacramento?

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Major League Baseball in the Sacramento region officially has a birth date: March 31, 2025.

That will mark the Athletics’ first home game of next season — the first year the A’s will play at their new-but-temporary home, West Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park.

MLB on Thursday released the league’s schedule for next season. The A’s will host the Chicago Cubs for their home opener Monday, March 31. Games’ start times for 2025 have not yet been announced.

Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé, who also owns the Sacramento River Cats, and Oakland A’s owner John Fisher announced in April that the A’s would move to West Sacramento for three seasons starting in 2025, with an option for a fourth.

The move comes as the team plans to relocate to Las Vegas, at a ballpark on the Strip that is not yet under construction. A’s ownership decided not to renew their lease of the Oakland Coliseum, which expires at the end of this season.

Other highlights from the Athletics’ 2025 calendar:

▪ All-Star sluggers Aaron Judge, Juan Soto and the rest of the New York Yankees will visit Sutter Health Park for a three-game series May 9-11. The final game of that series falls on Mother’s Day.

▪ The A’s first time hosting the San Francisco Giants in West Sacramento coincides with the Fourth of July, as the Giants will be in town for a weekend series July 4-6.

It’ll be familiar territory (though maybe not familiar turf) for some of the Giants’ younger players: The ballpark is also home to the team’s Triple-A affiliate, the River Cats. The A’s and River Cats will both use the ballpark next year.

▪ Sorry to any Sacramentans who were hoping to don Dodger Blue or catch a glimpse of the game’s top star, Shohei Ohtani, in the flesh. The Los Angeles Dodgers won’t visit Sutter Health Park in 2025. The A’s do face the Dodgers, May 12-14, but on the road in Los Angeles.

Ohtani — a two-time MVP winner who could very will win the award a third time before 2025 — was one of the players Ranadivé name-checked during an April news conference announcing the temporary move. Judge was another.

Under recent scheduling changes by MLB, each team plays at least one series against all 29 other teams every year. For most interleague matchups, the two teams alternate stadiums each year. That means the Dodgers’ potent lineup should swing through the capital region at some point in 2026 and, if the A’s remain in West Sacramento for a fourth season, in 2028.

▪ The A’s end the regular season with a six-game home stand, in which they’ll host the Houston Astros from Sept. 23-25 and the Kansas City Royals from Sept. 26-28. No serious baseball analyst expects the A’s — who entered the 2024 All-Star break with a 37-61 record, last place in the American League West division — to make the postseason next year.

Will Sutter Health Park be ready? Or cool enough?

A number of upgrades are planned for the minor-league ballpark as it gets called up to the majors in 2025.

Improvements being discussed include building a new home clubhouse beyond the outfield wall, new weight rooms and batting cages for home and visiting clubs, renovating the current home clubhouse to house visiting MLB teams, upgrading camera wells for broadcasts, creating a new press box and broadcast booths, as well as improvements for fans including club seating and video boards.

Construction on those projects is expected to begin in September, after the River Cats’ season ends.

The turf situation is a significant sticking point. With the park serving as home to both the A’s and River Cats, it will host nearly twice as many games. Second baseman Zack Gelof, the A’s representative for the Major League Baseball Players Association, said earlier this summer that this means synthetic turf will be added to the infield and outfield, to accommodate for the added wear and tear.

That creates a potential logistics nightmare. The addition would make Sutter Health Park the only outdoor MLB stadium with artificial turf, which can increase the temperature of the playing surface anywhere from about 10 to 30 degrees compared to natural grass in direct sunlight. The A’s will generally not be allowed to schedule night games on Sundays due to league TV broadcast rules.

On July 4-6 of this year, the same dates the Giants will visit in 2025, the National Weather Service reported that downtown Sacramento reached daytime highs of 109, 110 and 113 degrees, respectively.

The Bee’s Chris Biderman contributed to this story.