MESA, Ariz. — Hope springs eternal. At least on March 1.

“As far as young players, this is the best we’ve had since the late ’90s and early 2000s,” A’s executive vice president Billy Beane said Thursday. “The Hudson-Mulder-Zito-Tejada years.”

Wow. A bold statement.

“That’s a high bar,” Beane acknowledged. “But when you look over my 20 years, this group is one of the best we’ve had since then.”

The A’s have not struggled to spot talent. Beane and general manager David Forst are among the best at finding good players. And this is a strong young group, players who have established some chemistry by playing together in the minors. They want to be in green and gold, and can be a solid base for the future.

So why does it feel a little gloomy around the 2018 A’s, even in early spring?

Maybe because of an embarrassing offseason, when the team stumbled badly in its stadium plans, identifying a Laney College site that wasn’t actually available to it.

Maybe because the tightwad organization has shed $20million off an already bottom-feeding payroll, to $63.5 million.

Maybe because the players’ union filed a grievance against four teams, including the A’s, for failing to spend revenue-sharing money on improving their roster.

“I don’t think there’s much merit to it, on my end,” Beane said of the grievance. “David and I spend everything we’ve got, and it’s been like that historically. I think it’s more of a symptom of the different winter that’s gone on.”

That’s the problem. Everything that Beane and Forst have got in terms of finances is likely not enough to put out a winning team. Not in a division that’s one of the toughest in baseball, going against teams with two or three times the payroll.

Though the A’s have young talent, they could use at least one experienced pitcher because there isn’t any depth in the rotation — unusual for a franchise that so often has been rich with young arms. There are experienced pitchers sitting out there, unsigned because of the “different winter,” as Beane described the slowdown in free-agent signings over recent months.

The A’s also could use an older catcher, someone like Jonathan Lucroy, who has spent much of his career with Milwaukee (he split 2017 between Texas and Colorado). He remains unsigned. An experienced catcher could provide stability and leadership for a young staff, and that doesn’t even take into account the problems that probable starter Bruce Maxwell faced last year and still has hanging over his head.

This “different” market seems like one that someone with Beane’s skills could exploit expertly, but Beane said he doesn’t have the authority to spend any more money.

“We’re at the maximum of what we can do right now, that I’ve been given,” Beane said. “We’re given a budget. We can only spend what we can spend.”

Which, from this corner, makes it look like the union grievance has merit. The A’s are spending less than they’re taking in: $20 million in revenue sharing, plus the $50 million that each team received for a subsidiary property of MLB Advanced Media. That’s $70million in nonrevenue income, yet the team is spending only $63.5 on its payroll.

Under John Fisher’s restrictive and invisible ownership, the A’s don’t appear to be trying to improve the on-field product.

They’ve spent about $10million on new offices in Jack London Square. They have spent a million dollars on a new “party deck” at the Coliseum. But reinvest in the roster? That seems to be out of the question.

The A’s have plenty of the people on the payroll to build the business and run around and hold meetings about a new ballpark site. But now, they’re starting all over again.

Beane has said that he wants to keep this core together — no more trading people like Sonny Gray — as the team pushes for a new stadium. But with the restart on the clock for a new stadium, this group could be hitting free agency by the time any ballpark is finished. So that feels like another empty promise. Another case of more of the same.

I joked with Beane that I could solve their ballpark issue today: Stay at the Coliseum site that has a ready BART stop, that the A’s will have to themselves, that can be built to be a fantastic mixed-use project. They could put a shovel in the ground tomorrow.

“Listen, I run the baseball operations,” Beane said.

The A’s have assets that they don’t seem to be able to identify. An obvious ballpark site. A smart and committed-to-Oakland manager in Bob Melvin, who is the de facto face of the franchise but is signed only through next year. A team that might contend — and keep its fans engaged and energized — if it had a few more key players.

But thanks to the invisible, tightfisted ownership, it’s hard to feel hopeful. Even on March 1.