Sutter Health Park: The History, the Dimensions and How the Park Plays

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 11 min read

A guide to Sutter Health Park, the Triple-A ballpark the Athletics have used as a temporary home: its dimensions, how it compares with other parks, the franchise's earlier homes and what to know before a visit.

Sutter Health Park is an unusual entry in the list of major-league homes. It is a Triple-A ballpark in the Sacramento area that the Athletics have used as their home field while a new stadium in Las Vegas is built, and it appears in the historical record as the club's park for the 2025 season. A franchise that has played in Philadelphia, Kansas City and Oakland, and that has won nine World Series, spent its 125th season in a park that holds about 14,000 people.

That capacity is the first thing that separates it from the rest of the majors. Most major-league parks seat roughly three times as many; the other two parks in the comparison table below hold 37,442 and 41,373. Everything else in this guide follows from the size: the crowds, the sightlines, the logistics of a visit and the way the park plays are all those of a minor-league stadium asked to do a bigger job.

This guide covers what the site's reference data says about the park (its dimensions, capacity, surface and orientation), how the numbers compare with two other parks on this blog, the long list of earlier homes the franchise has used, and some plain advice for anyone planning a trip. It does not give a date for the park's opening, because the data we rely on does not, and it does not quote prices or transit details that change from season to season.

A Triple-A ballpark with a major-league tenant

The site's reference data describes the situation in one sentence: the Athletics are playing at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, a Triple-A ballpark with a capacity of about 14,000, while a Las Vegas ballpark is built. The ballpark record lists the city as Sacramento, the state as California, the surface as natural grass and the roof as open. The elevation is 24 feet above sea level, which means the air is as thick as it gets and the park has none of the thin-air effects associated with Denver.

The historical record tracks the move in the club's name as well. The franchise was the Philadelphia Athletics from 1901 to 1954, the Kansas City Athletics from 1955 to 1967 and the Oakland Athletics from 1968 to 2024. For 2025 the database simply lists the Athletics, with no city attached, which fits a team playing in a borrowed home with a new one still under construction.

If you are coming to this page to find out whether the park is "real" major-league baseball, the answer is yes in every sense that matters for the standings and the record book. The games count, the statistics enter the historical tables, and a player who homers at Sutter Health Park has homered in the major leagues. What differs is the setting. A Triple-A ballpark is built for a minor-league schedule and a minor-league crowd, and it has been stretched, not rebuilt, to serve a major-league club.

The club's own page on this site, the Athletics team page, carries the live record and schedule, and the Sutter Health Park ballpark page holds the reference data used throughout this article.

The dimensions, point by point

The reference data gives five distances, measured from home plate. Here they are beside the same figures for two other parks covered by this blog, Nationals Park and loanDepot park:

Two things stand out. The first is the right field line, 325 feet, the shortest of the five Sutter distances and shorter than the corresponding line at either of the other parks. The second is how ordinary the rest looks. A center field of 403 feet is deep by the standards of the game's history but typical of modern parks, and 380 feet to the gaps is roughly where the major-league norm sits.

A quick way to compare parks is to average the five distances. Sutter Health Park comes to 363.6 feet (330 plus 380 plus 403 plus 380 plus 325, divided by five). Nationals Park comes to 364.0 and loanDepot park to 370.4. On that crude measure Sutter Health Park is about the same size as Nationals Park and a little smaller than loanDepot park. It is a rough yardstick, because it ignores wall height, foul territory and the shape of the fence between the five measured points, but it confirms that the park is not a dramatic outlier on size.

What the numbers cannot show is the wall. The reference data lists distances, not heights, and a 325-foot line with a tall wall plays very differently from the same line with a low one. If you care about that detail, look at the park in person or in video and treat any figure you read elsewhere, including ours, as a starting point.

What the fence suggests about how the park plays

Park effects are measured from results, not from a tape measure. The standard method compares runs scored per game in a team's home park with runs scored per game in its road games, adjusts for the quality of the teams, and expresses the result as an index where 100 is average. We do not have that index for Sutter Health Park in the fact sheet behind this article, and one season is a thin sample, so we will not quote one.

What the geometry does tell you is where to look. A right-field line 5 feet shorter than the left-field line favors a left-handed pull hitter, since a fly ball hit down the right-field line has a shorter trip to travel. The distances to the gaps, 380 feet in each direction, are not short, so doubles and triples depend on outfielders' range and on how the ball bounces off the wall, not on a quick trip to a fence that is close. Center field at 403 feet is deep enough that a ball hit there takes a real swing to reach the seats.

Grass is the other half of the picture. A natural grass surface plays differently from artificial turf: ground balls slow down more on grass, and the infield dirt and grass edges can produce irregular hops, especially in a park that has hosted a long minor-league schedule. A fielder's range on a grass infield is a little less than on fast turf, a point we return to in the loanDepot article, where the surface is turf.

There is also the question of foul territory. A park with a lot of room behind the plate turns foul balls into outs and lowers batting averages. The reference data does not carry foul-ground measurements, so we cannot say how Sutter Health Park compares, and we would rather say that than guess. Anyone who sits behind home plate can judge it quickly: count how many rows separate the screen from the seats and how far the dugouts sit from the foul lines.

Sun, orientation and the Sacramento heat

The reference data lists an azimuth of 46. In the usual convention that is a compass bearing measured clockwise from north, and it describes the direction from home plate to center field. A bearing of 46 degrees points to the northeast.

The Official Baseball Rules include a recommendation on this point: the line from home plate through the pitcher's plate to second base should run east-northeast, which is a bearing of about 67.5 degrees. The reason is practical. In most of the United States that orientation keeps the setting sun out of the batter's eyes in afternoon and early-evening games. Sutter Health Park points a little more to the north than the rule's ideal, but it is well within the range that planners treat as sensible, and a night game takes the sun out of the question anyway.

Sacramento is known for dry, hot summer afternoons. We have no temperature record in our data, so the advice is the usual advice for a warm-weather ballpark: expect strong sun in the afternoon, bring water and sunscreen, and look at the seating chart before you buy so that you can choose between a shaded section and a sunny one. The roof is open, so there is no cover from sun or from the occasional shower.

Heat matters on the field as well. Warm air is thinner than cold air, so a fly ball carries a little farther on a hot evening than on a cool one. At an elevation of 24 feet the park gets no help from altitude, but a baseball in warm, dry air has less drag to fight. That is a general property of the physics, not a measurement taken at this park.

The arithmetic of a 14,014-seat home

The ballpark record gives a capacity of 14,014. Multiply by the 81 home dates of a standard schedule and you get 1,135,134, which is the most the park could draw in a season if every seat were sold for every game. The historical record credits the club with a 2025 attendance of 768,464 at Sutter Health Park, or about 68 percent of that theoretical maximum.

Compare that with the franchise's own history. The best season attendance in its records is 2,900,217, set in 1990 at the Oakland Coliseum. Spread over 81 home dates that is about 35,800 a game, so the whole capacity of Sutter Health Park is well under half of an average 1990 crowd, and the full-season ceiling of about 1.14 million is well under half of the 1990 total. Whatever happens at the box office, the building itself puts a cap on the gate that a major-league club does not normally face.

For fans the small size has real upsides. Sightlines in a 14,000-seat park are short, you are rarely far from the field, and the experience is close to the old minor-league feel with major-league players on the grass. The downside is demand: when a visiting team with a big following comes to town, the number of tickets is limited. If you plan to go, buy early through the club's official channels and treat third-party resale with caution.

Ten park names in 125 seasons

The Athletics have used more homes than most franchises. The historical record shows these park names for the club, each with the seasons it lists and the best home attendance in that span:

The list looks longer than the number of buildings because the same Oakland ballpark carried different names as sponsors changed. The labels from the Oakland Coliseum through O.co Coliseum all describe one stadium, and two of the season ranges overlap in the database because of how the names were recorded. Counting buildings, not names, the club has had five homes before this one: Columbia Park and Shibe Park in Philadelphia (Shibe Park was renamed Connie Mack Stadium for the last two Philadelphia seasons), the Kansas City stadium and the Oakland Coliseum.

The attendance column carries a story of its own. Shibe Park's best figure of 945,076 looks small next to the Coliseum's 2.9 million, but the numbers come from different eras, when the schedule, the population and the way clubs sold tickets were all different. The Kansas City figure of 1,393,054 is the best of the pre-Oakland years. The lowest numbers belong to Connie Mack Stadium's two-season span and to the current temporary home.

The franchise that moves in with it

Whatever the building, the club brings a long record with it. Through 2025, the historical record shows 125 seasons, a record of 9,405 wins and 9,945 losses (a .486 winning percentage), fifteen league pennants and nine World Series titles. The titles came in 1910, 1911, 1913, 1929, 1930, 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1989. The best season by winning percentage in the franchise's long history is 1931, at 107 wins and 45 losses, and the Oakland years added three straight titles in 1972, 1973 and 1974.

The recent years have been harder. One of the worst seasons in the franchise's history by winning percentage came in 2023, when the club went 50-112. Mark Kotsay managed the club from 2022 through 2025 and has a 255-393 record in those 648 games. The 2025 Rookie of the Year was Nick Kurtz, so the first season in Sacramento was not without a bright spot.

Several of the best-known records belong to the Oakland years. The club's career leader in home runs is Mark McGwire with 363, and Rickey Henderson leads in runs (1,270), stolen bases (867) and walks (1,227). Bert Campaneris has the most hits, 1,882, and Dennis Eckersley the most saves, 320. For the full story, read the history of the Athletics, the best players in Athletics history and the best Athletics seasons and every October run.

Planning a visit

Details that change from year to year, including ticket prices, gate times, bag policies, parking and transit, belong to the club and the venue, so check the club's official website before you go. The general advice below holds regardless of the schedule.

• Buy early. With roughly 14,000 seats, the supply is small, and popular opponents sell out.
• Pick your sun. Check whether your section faces the sun for the first innings of an afternoon game, and plan for heat if so.
• Bring water, sunscreen and a hat, and ask whether you may bring in an empty bottle before you assume you can.
• Arrive early for batting practice. In a small park the players are close, and watching the grounds crew and the pitchers warm up is part of the pleasure.
• Treat the schedule as provisional. Check the schedule page before booking travel, because dates and times can change.
• Look up the ballpark's exact location before you book a hotel, and allow extra time for parking and entry on a busy night.

If you are a fan of a visiting team, the same logic applies in reverse: tickets are scarce, so plan early. The Athletics' division rivals have their own stories; see the Houston Astros, the Seattle Mariners and the Los Angeles Angels.

Common questions

Is Sutter Health Park the Athletics' permanent home? No. The site's reference note describes it as the club's home while a Las Vegas ballpark is built. For the current plan, check the club's official site, since timelines for new stadiums move.

Does it play like a hitter's park or a pitcher's park? We cannot answer from the data in hand. The distances are ordinary, the right-field line is short, the surface is grass and the elevation is low. A real park factor needs several seasons of home and road results, and a single season is not enough.

Do the statistics count? Yes. Games played there are major-league games and enter the historical tables like any other. The 768,464 attendance figure is the database's record of the 2025 season.

How many people does it hold? The reference data says 14,014. The same note calls it a ballpark with a capacity of about 14,000.

Is it the smallest park the franchise has used? Not necessarily. The database lists best-season attendance for each park, and Connie Mack Stadium's 362,113 in a two-season span is lower than Sutter Health Park's 768,464. Capacity figures for the older parks are not in our data, so we make no claim about seat counts.

Where to go next

Start with the ballpark page for the reference data and the Athletics topic page for current news. For the larger story of how this franchise got from Philadelphia to Sacramento, read the history of the Athletics, and for the sport's biggest stage, the history of the World Series.