President of Minor League Baseball Pat O’Connor will retire at the year’s end, per The Athletic’s Evan Drellich (via Twitter). O’Connor has served as President since 2007, while spending 24 years in total with the minor league baseball offices and 34 years in professional baseball.
Minor League Baseball released a statement, provided by JJ Cooper of Baseball America. The statement reads, in part: “During his presidency, O’Connor oversaw a period of unprecedented increase in revenues and franchise values as Minor League Baseball attracted over 40 million fans in each of the last 15 seasons (2005-19), and in 2008, Minor League Baseball drew over 43 million fans for the first time since 1901.”
The future of Minor League Baseball remains very much in the air after losing this season to the pandemic. Even before the pandemic, however, tensions were rising the between Major and Minor League Baseball offices. MiLB has resisted contraction, but instead of losing a couple of teams, the whole system is in danger of falling under the control of Major League Baseball. All of which led MiLB to change their negotiation team early in August. Of course, the team that was brought in was said to be more in line with O’Connor – as opposed to Minor League Baseball team owners – so O’Connor’s retirement could foretell the end of MiLB as presently constituted.
He doesnt wanna watch Manfred ruin the minors, i would guess
Manfred’s plan involves eliminating his position. This is just a “you can’t lay me off, I’m retiring first!” move.
This is the end for MiLB, isn’t it?
no
No, just getting overhauled.
Right, the currently system has evolved and been changed before, so this is nothing new…some teams has so many minor league teams while other poorer teams has 1-2…people need to relax and realize change happens all the time
while i would agree with you to some extent, it’s not like that’s the same situation here. at the least any one team probably has 6 teams, (AAA, AA, two levels of A, GCL/AZL and a DSL team) whereas at most any one team may have 8, (presuming they use all three A levels and have a second GCL/AZL or DSL team) and its not like the smaller market teams (because no modern MLB team is “poor” in any way) cant just have more affiliates. its not about teams with less being unhappy, its about teams with more wanting to cut costs in a way that puts less blame on that team in specific.
Not so easy to relax when your community is losing its team that has been there every year since 1948.
Why yes, yes it is.
Yes. Minor league baseball as it’s own organization is over
Instead it will now be run by MLB, with them doing as they please with it
Perhaps the end of MiLB as a business organization, but not the end of minor league baseball as a thing.
How big is his pension? Will the bankruptcy judge permit it to be paid? A great gig….until it wasn’t.
The whole system isn’t under MLB control? I’m shocked.
It will be soon enough
He was going to lose his job anyways. Saw the writing on the wall and went out on his terms.
Well, at least if you believe this….https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29795127/why-mlb-minor-leagues-know-end-sept-30
He isn’t leaving on his own terms. Major League Baseball has already said they would not work with him anymore. Pat replaced the old negotiating team with people who are more aligned with him, and presumably they tried to save his job and failed. Good riddance Pat!
Even after reading this, I’m not dumbfounded, but merely confused. Obviously Pat can ride into the sunset with his retirement, but what about MiLB? Will a new President be a yes man to Manfred (oh please god no), or will he stand up to Manfred and… get shut down. So many tantalizing options lol.
So is he gonna be the next Padres manager then?
So MILB will eventually kind of run like G league in the NBA?
Dang for I thought it said Major League baseball president announced retirement. I had hope.
Ain’t NOTHING that good gonna happen in 2020!!
I miss minor league baseball this year.
The odd thing is the only thing that can save the MLB IS the MiLB.
MLB is on a suicide mission. Maybe MiLB should jettison THEM.