As we know, changes have long been on the horizon for MLB and MiLB’s working partnership. The agreement between the two entities recently expired, and MLB now plans to bring the minor league system under their governance. MLB took a big step towards accomplishing their goals today.
MLB released a statement today announcing their plans to transplant the minor league offices to MLB’s headquarters in New York City, per Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times (via Twitter). Shaikin also notes that MLB is now referring to minor league clubs as “licensed affiliates.” J.J. Cooper of Baseball America provides MLB’s full statement here.
By joining the offices to MLB headquarters, the minors are now a branch of MLB, notes Maury Brown of Forbes (via Twitter). Part of this process is the hiring of Peter Freund and Trinity Sports Consultants to help MLB and their new “licensed affiliates” transition. Freund owns minor league clubs at three levels, and he is a partner with the Yankees. His broader responsibilities will be in spearheading MLB’s efforts to build a cohesive minor league system and “implementing a modern approach to player development,” per MLB’s statement.
MLB has taken a lot of heat for their movement in this direction, specifically for insufficient minor league players salaries and the cutting of some 40 teams from the minor league system. Minor league ballplayers recently got a big win in the courts when the Supreme Court denied MLB’s appeal, thereby granting players class action status in their lawsuit against Major League Baseball. Basically any minor league player since 2009 can now join the suit in suing MLB for violation of minimum wage laws. This is one of the many issues that MLB hopes to address over the coming months.
To their credit, MLB has committed to maintaining a baseball presence in every market where minor-league baseball currently has a team. What exactly that amounts to is difficult to parse on a broad scale, but in many cases it will mean instructional leagues or camps, wooden-bat leagues – potentially for amateur participants – and youth programs. The goal, MLB insists, is not to eliminate those 40 cities who are losing their minor league teams from the baseball community – but to revamp and streamline the broader system to build a more comprehensive, efficient, and lucrative development pipeline.
What exactly is going on with this change? How will this change the minors as a whole? Im so confused lol
Instead of trying to grow the game, MLB seems intent on destroying the game. I can’t imagine the 40 or so cities being excited over a lesser product in their stadiums.
Lesser product? Consolidating all the A, AA, A+, A-, and all the other teams should make for a better product.
And honestly, who goes to the minor leagues to watch the players? It’s all about player development (not winning) while kids get to think they are at a real ballgame.
I actually like the idea of cutting some teams, but not as much as the MLB wants. Just get rid of Class A Short Season and Rookie Advanced. The rest of the teams are fine.
exactly, alot of the people complaining are the ones who don’t even go to minor league games. as long as the product is better and the players are properly compensated I’m all for it
I go to the games to watch the players. I have attended minor league games at 6 different stadiums over the past couple of seasons including one that is on the chopping block, the Mahoning Valley Scrappers. Many of the people that follow baseball in these communities follow the parent club, but can not afford the prices. Fewer opportunities for people to attend games will cause some fans to move on away from baseball and on to other activities. Between this and the constant feuding between MLB and the MLBPA, I am growing more frustrated and losing interest. in the game.
I go to minor league games, in fact and hopefully will again next year, have season tickets to the Lake Elsinore Storm. They are/were the advanced A team of the Padres. Love seeing the players play and follow their careers. Remember Correa smashing his knee up sliding into third base there a few years back playing against the Storm. Basically loved the 66ers coming to town as I’m an Angels fan. The location of the Dodgers, Angels, and Padres advanced A teams also allowed me to see stars on their final rehab assignments before joining the big league team off the DL. I go to Angels games but have switched to minor league games the last 10 years because there’s more entertainment, promotions, and it’s a small up close experience with the players. You can even sponsor players giving them room and board at your house if you wanted to help the kids out. The experiences my family has had with the minor leagues trumps the 40 years of being season ticket holders for the Angels. So yes I think it will be a lessor product not being run locally in the communities. Make it a less entertainment and immersive experience.
I agree with Hockey John. The minor league experience for me has always been fun. I am losing interest in the game with all the changes too. Seems like the Harvard bean counters are ruining the game to me. Why is the office in New York City? Shouldn’t it be located somewhere more centrally located? And I believe fewer teams = fewer opportunities for players and less interest in fans not living in major league cities. Too bad.
MLB is seeking to cut costs and won’t pay players better. My family and I go to minor league games all the team. We could care less about player development. We like the atmosphere, the silly food and rooting for the home team. We have a Houston affiliate and I could care less about the Astros but it’s still fun. MLB has so many problems starting with a dearth of likeable stars, the insane cost of seeing a MLB game, ESPN showing 50-60 percent Cubs games, the lack of sound fundamentals, the pace of play, analytics demolishing exciting aspects of the game and the general anything for a buck attitude
Actually Paul, MLB fully intends to increase wages to minor leaguers next year. They’ll be able to do it without increasing the bottom line by cutting the jobs of 1,000 players who are nothing but filler – they have zero chance of ever making the bigs. This reduction in filler will in addition lead to a better fan experience (assuming you live in a minor league town whose team wasn’t cut), because it means better players will be in uniform.
Well I for one go to the games to see a baseball games while at the same time seeing the players who might some day see the bigs. The only thing I see this doing is to make the Independent Leagues stronger.
SoxProspects.com has 37 years of draft history. Look at how few draftees from rounds 20 through 40 even play a single game in the mlb. The cost for those low A and rookie teams is huge compared to the benefit it creates in player contributions to mlb.
What is the average attendance at these games. It is very small compared to the benefit. College baseball is a similar product for fans that want to attend games of teams that are contracted.
Most minor league players never play beyond AA, and 97 percent never even play a single game in the mlb. If players do not like the pay they can get different jobs as most will NEVER play in the MLB and there only sizable money is the signing bonus, if that.
“Properly compensates” means raising ticket prices. Minimum wage means companies either pass on the cost or go out of business. Why do people not understand this.
Most Americans need a year or two of Economics and Accounting as they just do not understand how business works. As evidence look at the number of bankruptcies. Americans level of preparedness for retirement and personal finance is disgusting!!!
Why don’t we just use your economic theories across the board throughout America? I think it is time to give back to the robber barons once again. They are so poor and needy. I mean, if people don’t like getting paid less than minimum wage, they should suck it up and find another job that pays less than minimum wage. Make America Great Again, right?
theyre intent on making more money, not destroying the game. intent is the difference between murder and manslaughter.
Still, someone ends up dead…..
I’m sure they are even less excited about their tax supported stadiums losing their main revenue source
and the owners of the teams seeing their multi
million dollar investment now worth zero. Has MLB even mentioned the word compensation? HA HA!
I hear crickets…..
Instead of 30 Triple-A teams, for example, I expect Triple-A leagues scattered about with 40-50+ Triple-A (or whatever level) teams as long as Rob Manfred gets his cut, and discord against Baseball One is ‘managed’.
Excited to have a better, more consolidated minor league system: AAA, AA, A. We don’t need a bagillion teams. That’s what college sports are for.
Brad..fish: So, where would you assign the newest draft class? Do you start ALL high school draftees in A ball & ALL college draftees in AA?
That’s why they’re moving the draft back to the all star weekend. The draftees will either play in the GCL or AZL or a mot of pitchers will not even get assigned to teams until the following season considering the workload the typical college pitcher has in a season
wooden bat league more than likely
Extended spring training.
They won’t play their draft year. Because money and control.
How many College players come out ready to contribute? These players need to learn the finer points of playing in the big leagues. I think more money should be spent on the international markets especially the Latin markets.
Contribute?
They were ready to contibute in the DSL, GCL, Northwesr League, NY Penn Leage, the Pioneer League, or the Appy League.
Which is why those leagues existed.
I’m skeptical of any idea Manfred has. And I hardly expect training camps to replace the “baseball experience” of minor league teams in smaller cities across the country.
Terrible. Here are the teams Manfred has just wiped out:
Appalachian League (advanced Rookie): Bluefield Blue Jays, Bristol Pirates, Burlington Royals, Danville Braves, Elizabethton Twins, Greeneville Reds, Johnson City Cardinals, Kingsport Mets, Princeton Rays
California League (advanced A): Lancaster Jethawks
Carolina League (advanced A): Frederick Keys
Eastern League (Double-A): Binghamton Rumble Ponies, Erie SeaWolves
Florida State League (advanced A): Daytona Tortugas, Florida Fire Frogs
Midwest League (full-season A): Burlington Bees, Clinton LumberKings, Quad Cities River Bandits
New York-Penn League (short-season A): Auburn Doubledays, Batavia Muckdogs, Connecticut Tigers, Lowell Spinners, Mahoning Valley Scrappers, State College Spikes, Staten Island Yankees, Vermont Lake Monsters, Williamsport Crosscutters
Northwest League (short-season A): Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, Tri-City Dust Devils
Pioneer League (advanced Rookie): Billings Mustangs, Grand Junction Rockies, Great Falls Voyagers, Idaho Falls Chukars, Missoula PaddleHeads, Ogden Raptors, Orem Owlz, Rocky Mountain Vibes
Southern League (Double-A): Chattanooga Lookouts, Jackson Generals
South Atlantic League (full-season A): Hagerstown Suns, Lexington Legends, West Virginia Power
Weird! My home team is on that list and they haven’t been “wiped out” yet. They are on the chopping block, but nothing is even close to official. It’s almost like you are spreading misinformation without double checking to make sure it’s true…
exactly
That list is very outdated.
The only for sure cuts are the Appalachian league which will become a college summer league.
You forgot the Pioneer League with teams in Idaho, Utah, Montana and Colorado. I am not ready to say it will be a disaster u til it happens. It would be stupid for MLB to cut too much as this is where the players come from. Let’s wait and see.
Their overall point is few players actually come from all these teams in the low minors. They are claiming its a waste of resources and an outdated development model. I don’t necessarily agree with it….just stating their reason for it.
The Pioneer or the NYP league may survive in a split season format with the FSL High A league. The FSL does horrible attendance numbers in the 2nd half of their season and the Pioneer and NYP leagues would be too harsh of weather in the first half of a season. The real truth is all we know is MLB wants to reduce to AAA, AA, High A, Low A and the complex leagues. We dont know if they still intend to cut 42 teams or not. I doubt they even know what the model will ne next year yet.
Confused why there are double a teams on thenlist
The Jackson Generals won the Southern League championship last year and were notified they were on the chopping block.
Jackson’s was one of teams that people thought was a candidate to move to New Orleans.
that’s a whole lot of a ball leagues, probably better to keep 1 A ball league
That list is outdated for example Pulaski was originally supposed to keep a affiliation in last year’s list but that has confirmed to be no longer the case. Which means another team is now slated to keep a affiliation.
This made me mad. I got to multiple Chattanooga lookouts games a year. Had some great memories. Got to throw out the first pitch to ryan hanigan one night. Got to meet joey votto and get a votto bobble head. Thirsty Thursday one dollar draft beer. The zooperstars, used car night, getting edwin encarnasion to sign a ball. Man that sucks. R.I.P
You had me at, “Thirsty Thursday one dollar draft beer.”
Some of the best names on that list! LumberKings, Legends, Lookouts, Muckdogs, Scrappers, Doubledays, etc. I just pray the remaining teams don’t get rebranded as the MLB team names. I’ll give you an example of what I mean: the Scranton Wilkes Barre Red Barons became the RailRiders. Then the Yankees took them over and they became just the “Yankees.” BORING!!! Good news is that they have been changed back to RailRiders. Unfortunately their uniforms still look like the Yankees. I fear that all these remaining MILB teams will lose their unique identities as MLB takes over marketing tasks.
Great ballpark at Quad Cities when it’s not flooded.
I’ve been to 83 minor league parks in 32 states, including 22 from your list. If I add the Arizona and Maryland Fall Leagues, the number of parks goes up to 92.
I may be an outlier in this regard but every year since 1991 (except this one) a small group of friends (usually 10-12) from around the country get together for a long baseball weekend. When possible, we choose locations that allow us to visit more than one club. The year we went to the southern part of the Appy League, I drove down from Northern Virginia, stopping to watch the Lynchburg Hillcats and then 4th of July fireworks from surrounding towns while sitting on the outfield grass. We caught games at Bristol, Johnson City, Elizabethton, and since the Kingsport game was at night, we drove down to Asheville for a game that afternoon. On the way back home, I stopped off in Salem, VA, for a game.
It’s all about money nowadays, not just the owners but the players, too. The NBA and NFL get their players from colleges while poor MLB has to pay players and support a farm system. Is it surprising that MLB wants a change?
MLB is just mad because MiLB product increased in attendance yearly, while MLB didn’t.
If you can’t beat ‘em, ruin ‘em.
You said it. Manfred is just wiping out competition in these markets as more and more fans get priced out of the ability to attend an MLB game.
MiLB in these communities is great and a great alternative to paying out the wazoo for a marginally better MLB product. MLB = $40/ticket for average or bad seats, more like $75 for a semi-decent seat; $20 to park; $6 hot dogs; $10 beers
Minor leagues = $40 gets you the absolute best seat in the entire house – average ticket is $10; fun, kitchey, family promotions, and $1 hot dogs and $5 parking.
$20 dollar parking for a Major League stadium is a good price. I attended ballparks where parking was $40 dollars.
is MiLB really “competition?” the MiLB product would only be competitive because in terms of being cheap, but do you really get the same or better on the field product for the price? MiLB might be better for, say, a family outing with the kids, but serious fans overall will always prefer the Majors.
But not all “serious” fans live within hundreds of miles of an MLB team…..
milb product is inferior that’s why they have the family promotion and $1 shart dogs. properly compensate the minor league players though
I suspect part of the thinking is to cut competition from the minors so attendance in MLB will rise. I think it would be easier to lower costs in MLB. We live in Albany and used to go to Yankees, Mets and Red Sox games. The fans in Yankee stadium are appallingly rude, the trip to NYC is sick and the prices are insane. The Mets are boring. The Red Sox are the best option but prices are crazy. We saw two games in Target Field and ticket prices were half of that charged by the Red Sox.. Food prices sucked everywhere. MLB needs to stop gouging the fans.
Paul – i agree 1000000 percent!!!
MLB tickets are from disposable income and if the price is too high you simply spend your discretionary dollars somewhere else!
Love watching the Bees, Lumberkings and River Bandits play. All decent parks and afforable. Stop charging $12 a beer and maybe a guy could afford an MLB game
You know you don’t have to drink beer?
If you’re a Mets fan, that’s not true
#bringbackprohibition
You have lost all of my respect. That’s why the U.S. is losing the drug war because of horse and buggy economic thinking…..
exactly
But if one wants to, they don’t have a choice other than pay the $12+ or risk getting caught sneaking something in.
It’s part of the overall experience and package. If people that like to attend games also like to imbibe while they watch, they might consider going to fewer games if the overall experience costs too much.
The “but you don’t have to” argument is pretty weak. Few of us need what we spend 90% of our money on. But we do, because we want to. Doesn’t make it any easier to balance the budget at the end of the month.
To that point, the discounted beer nights at my local minor league affiliates tend to be huge draws.
You’re going to see the trend of MLB clubs outright owning their minor league affiliates become even more common.
to be fair, they already own about half of them, and its very possible that this move would have happened anyway once over 50% of the teams were owned.
While the millionaires don’t take infield, throw competitively from the outfield to the bases or regularly take batting practice, Minor league teams do. It’s called work. Millionaires don’t ever want to work.
Billionaire owners won’t open the stadiums and allow us to watch the few ballplayers that go through the motions. Very different from the minor league parks who open sometimes as early as 4 hours before a game.
I watch baseball and I closely follow the game but I refuse to pay $40.00 a ticket and sit in the outfield. Corona Virus Baseball is a good thing.
Why would a business/team expose itself to added liability by allowing people into the ballpark early and run the risk of someone getting hurt? Just because it used to happen that’s not the reality anymore, same as netting not being a common feature but now they are. It’s just a matter of limiting exposure to liability
“Millionaires don’t ever want to work.”? What a blatantly incorrect blanket statement that you may want to re-think. There are many, many millionaires that work their asses off. I know that for a fact.
You may have meant “Baseball Millionaires” but you didn’t say that.
It’s pretty easy to become a millionaire when you’ve got the government pumping money into your business via forced taxpayer investment as a coronavirus bailout.
I’m pretty sure they were millionaires before they ever considered purchasing all or part of an MLB team, in fact they had to be.
There are too many minor league teams. Does anyone think that keeping players in the minor leagues who have no chance of advancing is good for that person?
Where would any of us be if we spent our twenties in AA?
I think this is a good thing.
I am sure that those clueless players will all agree with you.
I’ve had a successful, happy life. Looking back, I would have liked to spend my 20’s in the minors….
Let’s remember that expansion is inevitable, so 8 of those cities will wind up with “licensed affiliates”. The other bumped cities will join Independent Leagues, which, BTW, is really fun baseball to watch; those guys are trying to get back into “The Show” and are busting butt to get there.
And again, the realization is coming that keeping prime (especially college) talent in the low minors is extremely counter-productive in MANY instances. What do you learn in High A? How to hit High A pitchers. That may or may not help you hit MLB pitching.
Nutrition, lodging, and lots of other stuff will be easier to control. If I sign a guy for 5M, I don’t want him eating Big Macs 7 times a week and living at the Do-Drop Inn.
and with the “partner leagues” thing the idea of jettisoning affiliates to the independent leagues shouldn’t just be a death sentence for them. kinda why this seems like less of a story to me each day.
The Red Sox taxi squad games were available online and the prospects who were in A and AA made way more progress playing against AAA and players with mlb experience than they would have against lower level competition. If you google Sim City Pawtucket most of the games were available. Casas, Groome, Duran, Downs,…all took keeps forward and will probably arrive in the mlb sooner because of their experience.
Hope they don’t tinker too much. My wife and I are baseball travelers and our experience is that minor league baseball (even wooded bat leagues) are a great experience for the money. Baseball in rural America can be great. In 2020, We were set to see a couple of games in the Cape Code league (and a game in the last season of Boston AAA in Pawtucket). Covid fixed that.
Manfred is creating his kingdom. Between the rules changes that probably will stay for next year and eliminating quite a few minor league teams is bad for baseball. Maybe there should be a change at commissioner?
So we are going to grow the game by cutting 40+ teams?
The truth is that MLB teams (like Toronto) could increase players salaries especially in the lower minors if they wanted to….it would be a drop in the bucket compared to their entire budget.
Want to upgrade the ballparks. Easy enough. For every dollar spent on upgrading the minor league facilities that money goes into either their draft pool or international signings upon completion of the project. This would be verified by seeing the final bills on the project submitted by the contractor/company to MLB and the MLB team submitting their final bill on project as well.
ive been doing some looking into the stats from players debuting this year vs the level of minors they previously played at and early returns really dont seem to show much of a difference between coming up from AAA and the A levels. personally i think there is some bloat, but i think 5 levels (AAA, AA, A+, A, ROK) plus the DSL is the best format.
Some thoughts:
(1) I’m glad milb is put under the umbrella of MLB, because minor league coverage was night and day between milb franchises without uniformity. For example, some would post transactions daily, so a fan would know if someone was being sent up and sent down… and some would be a week or so behind. Some would have comprehensive game notes, some would not.
(2) As much as I hate baseball being lost in communities that had served their clubs well, some minor league stadiums were in poor conditions. I would hope those would be the ones on the chopping block. I would also hope that whereas milb was so locked into “you will be a AAA team for eternity, but you may be a Brewers affiliate this year, and a Blue Jays affiliate next year, and a Giants affiliate four years from now” … that will all go by the wayside. Things like Las Vegas being a AAA club for the Mets made no sense. A AAA player should be a stone’s throw away from his major league club, instead of having to take a 4 hour cross country flight when someone goes down to injury.
(3) I believe this will enrich the NCAA baseball experience too. A college grad who is talented should not waste away at the Rookie league level. Conversely, I don’t see it as a negative if an 18 year who is not elite starts off in college for a year or two. I think the NBA has set a good model for this.
(4) Speaking of … I would hope that the minor league franchises that are being displaced would be picked up by the Atlantic League, and that other indie leagues (Frontier, etc) would combine to make one developmental league, similar to the G league or XFL, which would be a combo of breaking in talent that needs an opportunity to play and a place for the stereotypical AAAA player that hasn’t been able to capitalize on major league opportunities when given them and is in danger of aging out of the system.
Looks like MLB is taking on even more expenses. The Players Union should keep a close eye. MLB may need a larger cut of the profits and the union will have to take it on the chin or go on strike, or at least cry about it.
manfraud must want to ruin baseball for fun.
There will a lot of independent ball teams that come out of this
I hope the MiLB class action stuff totally smacks Manfred in the proverbial crotch.
You’re special lol… the class action stuff won’t affect any of the league employees bc they dont make policy. The owners are the one that will lose if there anything to come out of the lawsuit. I wish you idiots would realize that Manfred has no real authority. He’s a figurehead for the 30 owners. Someone who represents them collectively.
I’ll just never understand this country…you wanted no holds barred capitalism, but then complain when teams look to extract every last dollar from every corner of their operations.
What did you think was going to happen?
Too bad the now retired minor league president was a major league wanna be and a total toady. I never understood why he didn’t use the minors leverage to force greater benefits. The majors taking
8% of minor league revenue!!?? Outrageous!
He could of taken all minor league teams out on a strike to force concessions. Where were the majors going to go to develop their players?
(I hear crickets!)
One of the greatest missed opportunities of all time. This is why you do not hire a fox to run a henhouse.
Or more succinctly, an egg loving clown…..
Many problems here. Mainly the minors have zero leverage. The owners rely on MLB to cover the cost of players, coaches and equipment. Next, there is no minor league players union. So no strike. Lastly, what player in his right mind would go out of his way to upset a major league team? There can be a strike at the MLB level bc almost every player in the union has made more money in one season than the average American makes in multiple years. You really dont understand the business of baseball do you?
MLB has been upset because there are issues in the minor league’s that are hard to fix in the current system. In the past decade the Blue Jays, Mets and Nationals have been forced to have their triple a affiliate’s on the west coast because MILB owners are guaranteed a PDC as long as they meet the facility standard’s that have been unchanged since 1992.
Manfred is a jerkstik
I never understood the MiLB system. MLB teams swapped out cities quite often. I remember when the Ft Wayne Wizards/Tin Caps were a Minnesota Twins A affiliate then became a San Diego Padres A affiliate.
Also, the Erie Sea Wolves began as a Pirates affiliate for 5 years -then an Angels affiliate for 2 years then a Tigers AA affiliate for 19 years and now, according to the list above, are scheduled to be eliminated.
If there were an independent league team near me, I’d rather go to their games than to my defending AAA champion Sacramento River Cats. What’s the point of rooting for your team when your team doesn’t care about winning and any player who succeeds will be quickly promoted away for it? Even being the champions is a hollow victory because you know the result would be totally different if the best players on the opponents hadn’t been promoted.
Independent teams are actually trying to win. Sure they’re less skilled, but I don’t go to a baseball game to evaluate talent. I’ve been enjoying watching the CPBL Rakuten Monkeys this year more than MLB, the lesser talent makes no difference at all to the experience — except positively, because when nobody throws 100 MPH you get to see contact and hit and runs and bunting and so forth.
So, if minor league contraction results in stronger independent leagues filling in those cities, it could be a good thing.