The minor-league realignment and contraction plan that MLB first floated last fall has moved to the back burner due to the COVID-19 shutdown. The pandemic will likely keep players off the fields at all levels until July — and I believe we won’t see fans in stadiums until at least September, if at all — but the proposal hasn’t changed.
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There’s concern on the minor-league level that MLB might try to use the shutdown as further leverage to squeeze concessions from MiLB, whose owners are more vulnerable to this economic downturn because so much of their revenue depends on attendance, as opposed to MLB clubs which have significant broadcasting and internet revenues. Sources familiar with the negotiations to date have told me MLB is still pushing for more benefits for their side, even after significant public and Congressional backlash to the plans that leaked to the press last fall.
The status quo in minor league baseball is inefficient, and many MLB teams’ concerns about the current geographical setup are well-founded. If you set out to design a system to develop baseball players from when they exit the amateur ranks to the point where they’re ready for the majors, you wouldn’t come up with the current one. The seven-rung ladder of the minors — complex leagues, advanced rookie, short-season A, Low A, High A, Double A, Triple A — isn’t efficient, the leagues and teams aren’t well-situated to serve the major-league clubs, and many current franchises are located where they are due to tradition, without reflecting population shifts in the last 60 years. (That last point applies to a few major-league markets as well.) The advanced rookie leagues are probably superfluous, given improved drafting and how soon the best teenaged players are ready for full-season ball, while the towns in the Appalachian League and the travel times in the Pioneer League make them unsuitable for player development purposes. The short-season A leagues could be condensed, and perhaps they need to function more like complex leagues with greater emphasis on training where the games are almost incidental — but that doesn’t square with private ownership of individual franchises.
There is tangible evidence that there are teams in markets that don’t support them — Clinton, Beloit and Burlington in the Midwest League; Hagerstown in the Sally; Orem in the Pioneer League; and just about all of the Appalachian League teams draw so poorly that in an open, competitive market, those cities would no longer have teams. Many teams play in facilities that major-league executives feel are subpar, with Clinton and Hagerstown among those cited by MLB sources, and others play without adequate housing nearby or sufficient space for off-field work like training and conditioning. Bus trips between sites in some low-minors leagues (the Pioneer and Sally leagues stand out for this) are too long, and too many franchises are located far from their parent clubs.
The two sides disagree on how many such situations exist in the minors; MLB sources say up to 25 percent of minor-league clubs play in subpar facilities, for example, while minor-league sources believe it’s fewer than ten teams. Both sides seem to agree that some reduction in the total number of franchises is inevitable and that some teams need to be relocated. There’s also the implicit assumption — supported on background by MLB sources — that reducing some of the costs of running one or two more farm teams per system would lead to higher pay for the minor leaguers who remain.
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Still, there’s something a bit off about Major League Baseball spending somewhere around $6 million to build a temporary stadium in Iowa for one game just as they’re pushing to eliminate three minor-league teams within the same state.
MLB’s initial proposal would drastically reshape the minors as we know them, affecting every level of professional baseball below the majors except for the complex leagues in Arizona and Florida. It would eliminate short-season baseball between the Gulf Coast League and the Arizona League, but would have “promoted” the Northwest League to Low A, preserving six of its eight franchises, with contraction of as many teams from the Midwest and South Atlantic leagues to compensate for the addition. Five of the Northwest League franchises that would survive in this scenario are decided, while the sixth remains up in the air between Boise, Salem-Keizer, and Tri-Cities; Boise is the best market, but the facilities there are considered subpar and the current Rockies affiliate would be an eight-hour bus ride from the nearest team in the reorganized league. The Pacific Coast League would be split into two leagues by geography, with a “new” third Triple-A league in the Midwest along the lines of the old American Association. Fresno, now in Triple A, would drop to the California League, replacing Lancaster. The new Triple-A league would add the independent franchises in St. Paul and Sugar Land, while San Antonio and Wichita would drop to Double A, even though the Wichita franchise is about to play in a brand-new Triple-A—caliber ballpark. (The Sugar Land Skeeters are part-owned by Bob Zlotnik, a minority owner of the Astros.) The proposal would also include some of the promotions and contractions outlined in coverage of the plans last fall, such as moving short-season teams in superb facilities like Aberdeen and Brooklyn to full-season leagues.
Some of this is founded in reality, but there are other motives at work besides simply making the minor league structure more rational. MLB owners want to buy more minor-league affiliates — and I think it’s fair to say they wouldn’t want to do so if those teams weren’t profitable to own — and some minor league owners believe that MLB is using the threat of contraction to try to drive down franchise prices. The owners of the Pirates tried to buy the teams in Batavia, N.Y., and Charleston, W.V., but didn’t want to meet the asking prices for either; both teams are now marked for elimination. It doesn’t help that MLB-owned minor-league franchises in subpar facilities (like Salem, Va.) didn’t show up on the list of teams to be eliminated, while privately owned ones in better facilities did. The state of facilities in Clinton, Iowa; Hagerstown, Md.; and Lancaster, Calif., which is also a launching pad for hitters, are not in question. Everyone would be better off if those facilities were improved or the franchises were relocated. Aberdeen, Md., has a short-season team that plays in a Double-A quality stadium, and you could bump it up to full-season ball and eliminate Hagerstown without moving any franchise out of state. Outside of the Appalachian League, where all franchises are owned by their parent clubs, nearly all clubs ticketed for elimination are privately or community-owned.
It’s also far from clear that wiping out one or two levels of minor-league baseball is going to help teams’ mission of developing players. Eliminating short-season baseball seems counterproductive in general — there’s a significant gap between the caliber of play in complex leagues and that of Low A, the bottom rung of full-season leagues — but it’s especially ill-advised this year, where, in the best-case scenario for the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, professional baseball is able to resume games in early July. MLB could still draft players in June, and then have such players play full summers in short-season leagues to make up for the playing time they missed in March through May.
The plan to eliminate three short-season leagues (New York-Penn, Pioneer, Appalachian) and move the fourth to a full-season format would also support MLB’s desire for a substantially shorter amateur draft, all of which would be a boon for independent leagues. The best undrafted players each year might end up in indy ball, where their teams would command much higher prices for them after they’ve played well for a few weeks or months — or if they simply go there and show that teams missed on them in the spring. And when one player does that and his market value turns out to be many times the $20,000 maximum MLB wants to set for passed-over players after the draft, it will expose just how badly the draft process underpays amateur players.
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But some players will simply choose not to play pro ball when faced with limited options — go to indy ball, play another year in college, or, if they’re drafted but not ready for full-season ball, just go spend the summer playing younger competition in complexes in front of friends and family. “We will lose players,” said one baseball operations vice president when I asked his thoughts on the plan. “While most of the facilities are far from perfect, most are just fine, and it’s a great environment for (players) to acclimate to pro ball. We need to pay them better and find better ways to train them.”
“It’s not an efficient use of money,” another team executive said of the current format of two short-season levels between the complexes and Low A, even though he said he preferred an environment with “more players, more opportunities to develop.” Another executive pointed out that teams draft more efficiently today than they did ten years ago, so there’s less need for a 30- or 40-round draft and thus for additional low-level affiliates to give all of those players places to play. A player development director admitted that MLB could probably do without the short-season teams “developmentally,” but that “some of the great affiliates are in short season, and it’s a shame those parks/cities may not have access to pro baseball again.” Multiple sources said they’d like to see any reduction in the number of players in affiliated baseball result in an increase in salaries for the players remaining.
A new Professional Baseball Agreement could allow MLB teams to choose whether to have a short-season affiliate. The New York-Penn League could still operate for those clubs that want affiliates between the complex leagues and low A; the circuit has 14 teams now, and could even split now into smaller circuits to reduce travel and allow for more complex-like operations with increased training time at their home facilities and less time traveling. There are solutions that still address some of the greater concerns from MLB’s perspectives that don’t require wiping out 42 teams, that still allow teams to execute different player development strategies.
Multiple sources indicated to me they felt MLB’s approach to the specifics of the realignment and contraction plan has been driven by a few major-league owners, some of whom own shares of minor-league teams or would like to buy into them. Some individual teams’ desires are easy to understand — for example, no East Coast MLB team wants to have a Triple-A affiliate in Fresno, and most teams want to have their affiliates close to their major-league cities for ease of player movement. But macro decisions that affect the entire industry, and will potentially impact the careers of hundreds of players if not more, shouldn’t be driven by questions of who owns what team. There are too many careers at stake for the current proposal to be the long-term solution.
(Top photo of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park: Brian Villanueva / Image of Sport via AP)
