MiLB agrees to contract

[weams]

 

[tntoriole]

2 hours ago, weams said:

 

I didn't like it then.   Don't like it now.    In particular, the first leagues to go appear to be historic leagues that are in Appalachia and the Pioneer League in Utah, Colorado, Montana, Idaho... But we shall see what happens.   Certainly now, many  minor league teams may indeed go under, many more than this contraction seeks.  

[ScottieBaseball]

Is Frederick a confirmed casualty in MiLB's concessions?

[Tony-OH]

They should swap Frederick with Bowie. Make Frederick Double-A and let Bowie take their 1990 ballpark to an independent league. Can't even get to Bowie during the week because of traffic anyways! 

[ArtVanDelay]

45 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

They should swap Frederick with Bowie. Make Frederick Double-A and let Bowie take their 1990 ballpark to an independent league. Can't even get to Bowie during the week because of traffic anyways! 

It seems so odd to get rid of the Keys.  They lead the Carolina League in attendance practically every year, pretty nice ballpark, great city.  It doesn’t make sense.  Get rid of Bowie or Norfolk.

[Ripken]

47 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

They should swap Frederick with Bowie. Make Frederick Double-A and let Bowie take their 1990 ballpark to an independent league. Can't even get to Bowie during the week because of traffic anyways! 

This.  It's bad enough they're killing teams but the Keys are well supported and the stadium/area is good for baseball.

[Tony-OH]

Just now, ArtVanDelay said:

It seems so odd to get rid of the Keys.  They lead the Carolina League in attendance practically every year, pretty nice ballpark, great city.  It doesn’t make sense.  Get rid of Bowie or Norfolk.

Norfolk is a great stadium and does pretty well overall. Sure it would be nicer to have the AAA team closer, but Norfolk deserves to keep an affiliated team. Heck, I'd like to see Aberdeen bumped to full season status. 

[Tony-OH]

1 minute ago, Ripken said:

This.  It's bad enough they're killing teams but the Keys are well supported and the stadium/area is good for baseball.

Agreed, Frederick should not lose it's affiliated team. The Orioles also don't want to start losing that areas to the Nats.

[Mr. Chewbacca Jr.]

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

Agreed, Frederick should not lose it's affiliated team. The Orioles also don't want to start losing that areas to the Nats.

I think this is a really good point. Frederick is almost a DC suburb because of I-270. Losing the Keys would be another blow to the Orioles rapidly decreasing territory. I mean, even Columbia is starting to turn into Nats country.

[scOtt]

7 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Norfolk is a great stadium and does pretty well overall. Sure it would be nicer to have the AAA team closer, but Norfolk deserves to keep an affiliated team. Heck, I'd like to see Aberdeen bumped to full season status. 

Reading that all short season teams would be eliminated, first thing I thought was Cal must be very unhappy about this news.

[Enjoy Terror]

“Agrees to contract” can be read in two completely different ways depending on how you’re feeling that day.

[DrungoHazewood]

The Saint Paul Saints (and Sugar Land Skeeters) are going to become affiliated teams.  What the...  The Saint Paul Saints were an original indy league team, in that first wave of early 1990s indy leagues.  The first unaffiliated teams since the 1950s  They are owned by Mike Veeck, who has his father's penchant for thumbing his nose at the establishment.  Of course Bill Murray is a minority owner.  They revel in doing unusual, weird, off-the-wall stuff.  They originated a lot of the crazy minor league promotions that now everyone copies.  The fanbase loves the fact that they're Saints fans and not Twins fans.

Now they're going to be just another affiliated team.  I'd bet they're probably going to be affiliated with the Twins.  Nobody will give two craps about their pennant race, and if the Twins needs their cleanup hitter to play third base for a month while Miguel Sano is on the IL, there goes their cleanup hitter. But it won't matter, because nobody cares about their fake affiliated-league pennant race anyway.

This is like Jerry Garcia going to work as a mid-level manager for IBM.

[DrungoHazewood]

Quote

For MiLB owners, the biggest desires in the negotiations are long-term security (avoiding a repeat of this difficult PBA negotiation in a few years), an assurance that their franchise values will be protected and a plan that provides as many cities and teams as possible a viable path forward.

Such a desire may lead MiLB teams to agree to a plan which would allow MLB to take over control of the governance of the minors, a possibility Ballpark Digest first reported last week.

If that happens, it would allow MLB to exert more direct control over all aspects of the minors, eliminating some of the governance issues that have bothered MLB in the past. Some MiLB owners have privately said that they find such a proposal appealing if it means that it gives them long-term security under the protection of MLB’s umbrella. No such proposal has yet been floated.

In the beginning minor leagues were just like the major leagues, only with fewer resources, often in smaller cities, not signing players that were quite as good. 

Starting around 1920 MLB teams started buying up minor league teams, and/or getting them to agree to sell any of their players to the MLB team for a fixed price.  Teams gave up their status as independent entities trying their best to win for the security of a fixed revenue stream.

By the 1950s that had evolved to most MiLB teams being direct affiliates of a MLB team, with little or no control over who played for them or who got called up.  But the minor leagues still had some semblance of their own governance and negotiated with MLB for conditions of their servitude.

Under this new agreement it now looks like MLB will more-or-less directly control the affiliated minors, and apparently have some influence over the indy leagues.  When they say "eliminating some of the governance issues that have bothered MLB in the past" what they really mean is they can eliminate minor league representatives annoying them with demands in negotiations.  MLB will say jump, and instead of there being a slight delay and maybe some concessions on what the MiLB teams will get for their jump, they'll just jump.

Consolidation of power by exploiting a crisis is kind of crappy.

[Redskins Rick]

17 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

They should swap Frederick with Bowie. Make Frederick Double-A and let Bowie take their 1990 ballpark to an independent league. Can't even get to Bowie during the week because of traffic anyways! 

I love Bowie, and not sure why you have trouble getting to Bowie, its pretty convenient off 2 major roads and toss in 197 as another smaller road to get there.

The stadium is great, not a bad seat in the house, parking is close and free, usually always a breeze as it backs up against a good set of trees

 

[Tony-OH]

13 minutes ago, Redskins Rick said:

I love Bowie, and not sure why you have trouble getting to Bowie, its pretty convenient off 2 major roads and toss in 197 as another smaller road to get there.

The stadium is great, not a bad seat in the house, parking is close and free, usually always a breeze as it backs up against a good set of trees

 

Well that's certainly an opinion, but if you think the stadium is great, you have not seen what a lot of Double-A level stadiums look like now. If you think there is always a breeze you haven't sat behind homeplate on a summer Sunday afternoon. If you think it's easy to get to during a week, you don't come down rt 3 from the north between 5:30 and 7:00 and even worse, don't have to spend the 15 minutes going from the rt 50 overpass to the Stadium road entrance as you wait in the dual unsychronized lights multiple times each.

Everyone likes what they like though. Saying that, I don't necessarily want to see Bowie lose their team, but I'd not prefer to see the Orioles lose an affiliate in Frederick even more.