WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif — When Dylan Carlson was growing up in nearby Elk Grove, Raley Field was the “coolest stadium” he ever played in.

As a youngster, Carlson attended games at Raley Field — now Sutter Health Park, the temporary home of the Athletics — hoping to get players to toss him balls behind the first base dugout. Then, as a high schooler, he played a few games at the minor league stadium home to the Sacramento River Cats of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League.

Now, Carlson is a big leaguer with the Orioles, and this weekend, he’s playing in the ballpark he grew up admiring.

“Being in the big leagues and coming back, it’s a different experience,” Carlson said. “It’s definitely not something I had on my radar.”

Carlson isn’t the only one. This wasn’t on anyone’s radar a few years ago.

It’s far from ideal to play Major League Baseball games in a minor league ballpark that seats 10,624, residing in a part of the country with 100-degree temperatures. But that’s what Athletics owner John Fisher elected to do, taking the ballclub out of Oakland and using Sacramento as a temporary home before eventually moving the team to Las Vegas later this decade.

Orioles outfielder Ramón Laureano played for the A’s from 2018 to 2023, calling the Bay Area home for six years and playing his home games at the iconic (but worn-down) Oakland Coliseum.

“Yeah, Oakland Coliseum meant a lot to me,” Laureano said. “At the end of the day, I love playing at whatever field I play. It’s another day in another baseball field.”

Before Friday’s series opener, Orioles coaches Anthony Sanders and Grant Anders were on the warning track tossing balls against the outfield wall to see whether any could get stuck underneath. (They can.) Interim manager Tony Mansolino, formerly the Orioles’ third base coach, has an Excel spreadsheet with notes on the different nooks and crannies at major league stadiums. This was his first time at Sutter Health Park, though, and Mansolino on Friday spent about five minutes during the home plate meeting with the umpires to make sure he understood all the ground rules.

Orioles players all spoke highly of the overall amenities at the ballpark — the work MLB and the A’s did to make the training room, the weight room and the clubhouses as comfortable as possible.“The facilities are decent, better than some other places we go to, for sure, especially the older ballparks, for sure,” pitcher Dean Kremer said. “They’ve made the best adjustments they can in the time that they’ve had. The weight room is good. They’ve got a lot of stuff in there, more than a lot of other places. The training room is decent size. The food room is decent size. In terms of the amenities, I think it checks all the boxes.”

“The clubhouse is spacious, it’s comfortable,” Mansolino said. “It’s probably a little more spacious and more comfortable for the visiting team than the Coliseum was.”

However, there are areas that have rankled some players. Minnesota Twins pitcher Joe Ryan told The Athletic that he thinks fellow starter Pablo López suffered his shoulder muscle injury earlier this week as a result of the mound conditions at Sutter Health Park. Kremer said he’s heard guys mention the mound is “too dry,” which could force a pitcher to put more pressure on his arm rather than properly use his lower body to kickstart the kinetic chain.

But the Orioles right-hander said he had little issue with the mound during his start Friday. Instead, it was the backstop being much farther back than most ballparks that was more noticeable for Kremer.

“It feels far, but that’s just because, like Fenway, the backstop is further than normal so it makes it feel like the mound’s a little bit farther, which takes a couple of pitches to adjust to,” he said.

One of the hardest adjustments for players, especially starters like Kremer, is the location of the clubhouses. Rather than attached to the dugouts, the clubhouses are behind the left field fence, meaning players and coaches have to walk on the warning track to get there during games. A’s manager Mark Kotsay was ejected during a game in late May and comically had to walk about 300 feet to the clubhouse as fans cheered after he argued with the umpires.

“The walk across the field after you’re done kind of gives you a spring training vibe,” Kremer said. “It feels like a minor league park. It doesn’t feel big league.”

A’s pitcher Luis Severino has expressed frustration with the location of the clubhouses. Between his innings, Severino likes to go into the clubhouse to collect his thoughts. That’s not possible at Sutter Health Park. This season, he has a 0.87 road ERA and a 6.99 home ERA.

Kremer is the same way, and it was an adjustment for him on Friday.

“I don’t sit in the dugout anymore. I started doing it two, three years ago and just kind of go into the little cubby because I don’t really want to watch our offensive innings just because I don’t want it to change the way I’m throwing,” Kremer said. “But there’s nowhere to do that here. You’re just kind of sitting in the dugout, nowhere to escape to, so that’s definitely weird as well.”

This weekend isn’t the last time the Orioles will play at a minor league ballpark this season. Later this month and then in July, the Orioles will play the Tampa Bay Rays at George M. Steinbrenner Field — the Yankees’ spring training home — after Tropicana Field was damaged by Hurricane Milton in October.

But Carlson isn’t focused much on the amenities at Sutter Health Park this weekend. He had 15 people, friends and family, to watch him Friday when he hit a two-run homer in his first at-bat, a “unique experience” that he said he’ll remember for the rest of his life.

“When you’re in high school playing at a stadium like this, obviously the size of it, how grand it is, looking back at it now after playing in some other stadiums, it’s gonna be a full perspective of getting to experience the game in so many different ways,” he said. “I’m grateful I got this opportunity.”

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