Every Wednesday in the MLB Insider, Kevin Henry takes Denver Gazette readers around MLB and into the Rockies’ clubhouse:

When it comes to professional sports, Las Vegas has proven it’s a sure bet and no roll of the dice.

Denver sports fans are well aware of the NFL’s Raiders and NHL’s Golden Knights being rivals of the Mile High City. Now those Las Vegas-based teams are preparing to welcome the Athletics into the fold as Major League Baseball is expected to open its residency on the famed Vegas Strip in two years.

Throughout a long and storied history, the Athletics have made their way from Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland to Sacramento. The next leg of the journey is scheduled to make the A’s a Las Vegas attraction when their $2 billion ballpark opens on the southeast corner of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard — a site where the Tropicana Hotel once stood — to open the 2028 campaign.

The first true test of the A’s as a Vegas home team comes this week as the franchise hosts the Milwaukee Brewers and Colorado Rockies for a six-game homestand at Las Vegas Ballpark, home of the Triple-A Aviators. When Milwaukee and the A’s met on Monday, it marked the first regular-season MLB game played in the Las Vegas area since 1996 when the A’s had to play six games in Sin City due to renovations to the Oakland Coliseum.

There have been spring training games involving the Brewers and Rockies in Las Vegas, but never regular-season games as late as June. Temperatures are expected to be well over 100 degrees when the Rockies and A’s square off.

Several Rockies players who have played at Las Vegas Ballpark in nearby Summerlin during their time in Triple-A described it as a hitter’s park thanks to the heat and lack of humidity, some of the same elements that help the ball carry at Coors Field in the summer. The wind can also be a factor, with the design of the park helping create a “wind tunnel,” according to players, that can carry the ball to left-center field.

And, yes, the elevation doesn’t hurt. Las Vegas sits at 2,030 feet, making it the second-highest city hosting an MLB game this season behind Denver.

There are plenty of reasons to think Las Vegas could see some offensive fireworks during this six-game homestand, setting the tone for what the A’s could offer in 2028 and beyond. However, Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy wasn’t concerned about the external circumstances before his team made its regular-season Las Vegas debut.

“I don’t put much thought into it. I just go where they tell me to go,” Murphy said before Saturday’s game in Denver. “I’ve seen baseball in Vegas for a lot of years. You have to figure out how to win the game, whatever environment you’re in. Football teams play in the snow. They play in all sorts of weather.

“You can’t put too much thought into it. I think people put way too much into those types of things, instead of just sticking to the things that make you good.”

The A’s going to Las Vegas is part of a sports explosion in the city since the Golden Knights burst onto the scene as the city’s first professional franchise in 2017. Las Vegas has hosted one Super Bowl inside Allegiant Stadium, home of the Raiders, and is scheduled to be the host city for Super Bowl 63 in 2029. In 2028, the NCAA Men’s Final Four will be held inside that same stadium.

In March, the NBA Board of Governors voted to authorize the league to formally explore potential team expansion to Las Vegas and Seattle. On the WNBA side, the Las Vegas Aces have won three of the last four WNBA titles.

And let’s not forget the Formula 1 spectacle that takes over part of the Strip every November.

MLB seems to fit right into the Vegas sports scene, with Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer, who grew up near Pittsburgh, seeing something very familiar in what is happening right now in Sin City.

“I think it’s extremely cool. It seems like people there absolutely love sports,” Schaeffer said. “Watching the Golden Knights play, they’ve had a ton of success in their early stages of their existence. Those fans are great and the Knights do cool things there.

“You like to see a city have success, especially with sports. I’m from Pittsburgh, and I know how cool it is to have good sports to be a part of something that’s great in the city. I think that’s happening in Vegas.”