The Athletics return to Sutter Health Park on Monday, fresh from a 4 of 6 run in their future home, Las Vegas. They open a three-game series against a Pittsburgh Pirates club that dropped two of three in Miami over the weekend and has now lost six straight starts by Paul Skenes. Six games in Nevada, then 75 in California, the geography scrambled by an owner who broke ground in the desert while the team still played the bay.
The detour ended with a 23-9 loss on Sunday in which Athletics pitchers gave up 24 hits and six home runs, a final taste of Summerlin that their 15-hit offense could not offset. Tyler Soderstrom’s 12th home run of the season, a seventh-inning solo shot, cut the deficit to 18-9, the second hit of his day and the 21st consecutive game he has reached base. The A’s took two of three from both the Brewers and the Rockies across the two interleague series at Las Vegas Ballpark, the Triple-A yard in Summerlin where their big-league club had never played a regular-season game before. On Monday, the geography flips again: West Sacramento, the Pirates, and a 75-game home stretch the A’s will not have to share with Nevada.
A Las Vegas Run, Then a Rocky Send-Off
The week in Las Vegas was, on balance, the kind of run the A’s will take. They won their first game in Nevada, a 7-5 victory over the Brewers that manager Mark Kotsay credited to the lineup’s resolve, then took two of three from the Rockies to close. The detour doubled as a dress rehearsal for a 2028 move the front office has been signaling since a ceremonial groundbreaking at the Tropicana site.
The send-off, though, did not flatter them. Athletics pitchers absorbed 24 hits and six home runs in the finale, a 23-9 loss to Colorado in which the A’s hitters tried to keep pace with a 15-hit afternoon of their own, including two home runs.
By Monday, the geography changes again. The Pirates wait, the Sutter Health Park crowd returns, and the A’s are reminded that the 81 home games on their schedule are split 75-6 between West Sacramento and Las Vegas. The split is permanent for 2026, and the franchise has spent the year alternating between promotion of the Las Vegas plan and reassurance of the Sacramento fan base. The next pitch from an A’s pitcher at Sutter Health Park is also the first in two weeks in their own air, with six home runs allowed in the last game still fresh.
- A’s 2026 home schedule: 75 games at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, 6 games at Las Vegas Ballpark in Summerlin.
- Las Vegas interleague run: 4-6 record, 2 of 3 vs Brewers, 2 of 3 vs Rockies, A’s first regular-season games in Nevada.
- Sunday finale: 23-9 loss to Colorado, 24 hits and 6 home runs allowed by A’s pitchers, 15 A’s hits including 2 home runs.
- Tyler Soderstrom: 12th home run of season, 21-game on-base streak, his second hit of the day.
Ginn Gets the Ball After Grading the Air
For a pitching staff still calibrating to thin air, the assignment Monday goes to the most reliable arm the A’s have. J.T. Ginn’s 2026 season stats show a 4-3 record and 3.15 ERA, his first career appearance against Pittsburgh, a 27-year-old right-hander who is 9-11 with a 4.23 ERA over 46 career games and 34 starts.
He is coming off a 7-5 win in Las Vegas in which he gave up five runs on eight hits across five-plus innings, a result that did not flatter the line but delivered the first A’s win on Nevada soil.
These conditions to pitch in are tough. But he (Ginn) grinded and gave us what we needed.
Mark Kotsay, the A’s manager, said it after Sunday’s finale, the same game in which the staff was hit hard. The 1.49 ERA Ginn posted in his previous six starts, a stretch that pulled his season number into the low threes, is the form the A’s would have wanted from any pitcher stepping back into Sutter Health Park for the first time since early May.
The Monday matchup is the kind of game a club with a young rotation dreams of: a pitcher in form, a team coming off a winning week, and a foe whose momentum has stalled. The A’s will not see Skenes in this series, because Pittsburgh’s ace pitched Sunday. What they do get is a Pirates team that has lost seven of its last nine, and an Athletics rotation in the middle of a youth push, with the top prospect the A’s just sent to the Sutter Health Park mound already in the mix.
Pirates Drag Skenes’ Wins Into a Hole
Pittsburgh came to Miami with the National League’s most polarizing pitcher in tow, and the Marlins still took two of three. Paul Skenes struck out 10 over six innings in Sunday’s 4-2 loss, a line that should have been enough to win, except the Pirates’ offense has spent the better part of two weeks scoring like a club that knows it has a Cy Young winner and one starter behind him.
The loss was the six straight Skenes start that Pittsburgh has dropped, a streak that began quietly and has hardened into a pattern manager Don Kelly cannot, by his own admission, name. The Pirates’ 36-35 record puts the club in the middle of the National League Central, a .500 team on a streak no ace’s win column can fix. Skenes’ 10 strikeouts over six innings in Sunday’s 4-2 loss were the kind of line that, in any other rotation, would land as a win, and the offense failed in a 4-2 decision. Kelly’s postgame answer, when asked what the team was missing, was the kind a manager gives when the answer is everything at once. Skenes, for his part, has been the same pitcher every time out there, and the losses keep showing up in the standings anyway.
It hasn’t been one thing, just we haven’t put together a complete game with him out there. I can’t point to one thing. He has been consistent every time out there.
Don Kelly, the Pirates’ manager, said it after the loss. Pittsburgh’s next chance to break the pattern comes Monday in West Sacramento, against a pitcher Skenes himself will not have to face.
Slotting Jones Between the Aces
The Pirates’ Monday starter, Jared Jones (1-0, 4.73), has been placed on purpose between Skenes and Mitch Keller, the two innings-eaters who bookend the rotation.
Manager Don Kelly framed the decision as much about managing workloads as about matchups. Jones has made three starts this season and has pitched 13 1/3 innings, a usage pattern Pittsburgh wants to keep on a leash, and the right-hander is 7-8 in his career across 25 starts. He has not yet faced the A’s, the kind of new-look matchup that gives Kelly room to manage the bullpen behind him, and the Pirates’ 2026 schedule and record show a club on the wrong side of .500 with 36 wins and 35 losses in 71 games.
| Pitcher | Team | 2026 W-L | 2026 ERA | Career W-L | Has faced opponent? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| J.T. Ginn | Athletics | 4-3 | 3.15 | 9-11 | Never faced Pirates |
| Jared Jones | Pirates | 1-0 | 4.73 | 7-8 | Never faced Athletics |
Why a Las Vegas Detour Mid-June
The A’s 2026 schedule is a year-long farewell to West Sacramento and a teaser of the move to come. The club plays 75 home games at Sutter Health Park, the Triple-A park the A’s have borrowed from the Giants’ affiliate, and 6 home games in Las Vegas, the first regular-season series ever played at Las Vegas Ballpark in Summerlin.
The arrangement is the bridge between the Coliseum in Oakland, where the A’s played for 57 years, and a planned $2 billion stadium at the Tropicana site that owner John Fisher has optimistically targeted for an 2028 opening. The two interleague series, three games against the Brewers from June 8 to 10 and three against the Rockies from June 12 to 14, were announced a year in advance. The point of the detour was the same as every move the franchise has made since the Oakland exit: keep Las Vegas in front of the fan base, the sponsors and the television partners, three years before the stadium opens.
- Las Vegas Ballpark (Summerlin): Triple-A home of the A’s, host of two 2026 interleague series, first regular-season MLB games at the venue.
- Sutter Health Park (West Sacramento): current MLB home of the A’s, capacity approximately 14,000, on loan from the Giants’ Triple-A affiliate.
- Planned 2028 stadium: at the Tropicana site, expected cost roughly $2 billion, ceremonial groundbreaking in June.
The two interleague series were announced in August 2025 as a test of the Las Vegas market three years before the stadium opens. The August 2025 announcement said the funding for the $2 billion stadium remained “somewhat up in the air,” and the ceremonial groundbreaking at the Tropicana site had come a month earlier, in June. Fisher, the A’s owner, has framed the Las Vegas project as the franchise’s final move after 57 years at the Oakland Coliseum. The arrangement, on the field, is a Triple-A ballpark hosting major-league games, with the same roster playing in two venues inside a single homestand. The Athletics’ front office has used the two Nevada series to keep Las Vegas in front of the fan base, the sponsors and the television partners, three years before the stadium opens, and the Athletics’ 2026 regular-season schedule reflects the unusual two-state home slate.
For all the off-field noise, the field-level question for Monday is whether Ginn can carry the A’s thin-air form back to sea level, and whether the Pirates’ offense can solve a pitcher it has never seen. West Sacramento is the only home the A’s know, for the rest of 2026 and 2027, before the planned 2028 move to Las Vegas. The first pitch Monday night is the first A’s home game in their own league’s air in two weeks, and the first time in this homestand that the rotation lines up against a struggling club.
