For the first time in over 650 days, the Athletics left the replies on across their social media pages on purpose. Fans quickly let them know that they hadn’t forgotten what transpired in Oakland, with hundreds of “sell the team!” comments flooding the space.

The initial post with comments open received 1.6 million views, since it was being shared (and dunked on) across social media. It also received 1,400 comments, compared to just 265 re-posts and 836 likes. Given that the post also had a prompt, there were also a number of fans that would answer the question with their favorite home run, and then provide their feelings about ownership.

It took scrolling through hundreds of comments to find the first person that even mentioned being excited about Las Vegas, and even that was more of a troll job. The fans of this team—well the ones that used to support the team—are still in Oakland.

Over on Facebook, this same post had another 952 comments, and the sentiment was very similiar over there, too. There did seem to be more people trying to actually answer the prompt, however. That said, we didn’t see anyone from Vegas in the comments on Facebook.

For a bit of comparison on some of those engagement numbers, the Dodgers, who just won the World Series, were getting millions of views on certain posts, like this one of WS MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto asleep with the trophy. Even with 5.3 million views, there were still only 589 comments. The Dodgers also have 3 million followers on Twitter/X while the A’s have 586,800.

Those are some pretty solid engagement numbers for the A’s to be putting up, because the Dodgers are the biggest team in baseball these days, and they have fans across the entire world. The A’s have fans in the East Bay.

The A’s then posted two more times this weekend with the focus being more on cool things that you may have missed by the A’s in 2025.

The home run post received 48.3k views, 477 comments, 25 re-posts and 78 likes, while the Denzel Clarke appreciation post was at 23.8k views, 189 comments, 23 re-posts and 81 likes. The same drop occurred on Facebook, with 340 comments and 214 comments overall. To be fair, they didn’t ask for comments on those posts.

The question now is whether this is kind of what the A’s are after. On the one hand, the anger is dying down drastically just days in. The first post had Dodger-level engagement, while the subsequent posts have been more manageable from a rage standpoint. It’s also not common for posts to get hundreds of comments, so it’s not like the fans have given up, either.

There was also some chatter in the comment section about the A’s brand being damaged throughout the entire relocation process, and while there is no denying that’s true, perhaps opening up the comments at this specific time has something to do with showing potential investors that they have tremendous social media metrics.

If I was the A’s and looking for a quick boost in engagement at a key time, opening up the comments for the first time in a couple of years would sure be a great way to boost those numbers. Then the A’s can point to the engagement they’re getting on a post and say, “see, we’re just like the Dodgers!”

Is that what’s happening? Who knows. But there isn’t an obvious reason for why they finally decided to open up the comments after two years, other than doing so out of the goodness of their hearts, and that doesn’t seem like the likely option. Perhaps they’re on the verge of signing the top free agent, Kyle Tucker? Nah, that can’t be it.

Maybe this weekend was just a test to see how angry fans still are. If that’s the case, they certainly received an answer.