MLB throws curve ball to Canadians and other minor-league franchises
Seismic shift presents possibility of Canadians’ return to triple-A play
It will be business as usual next summer for the Vancouver Canadians and Nat Bailey Stadium. And that’s about all we can be certain about looking forward about the team and the venerable ballpark right now.
The working deal between Major League Baseball and its minor-league affiliates like the C’s is up after the 2020 season, and Baseball America and the New York Times published stories Friday saying that MLB has put forth a first proposal for a teardown and complete rebuild of the system, including eliminating some 40 minor-league teams from the current 160 model.
C’s president Andy Dunn said that he’s confident in minor-league baseball’s leadership group in these talks, but wouldn’t offer up anything more than that. It’s easy to suggest, though, that Vancouver won’t be one of the teams shown the door.
Both Baseball America and The Times stated that MLB believes 25 per cent of current minor-league teams have substandard facilities. The C’s, led by head groundskeeper Ross Baron, stripped the entire infield and irrigation system at the Nat and built it back up before the 2017 season and it has gone well enough that Baron has been the Northwest League honouree by the Sports Turf Managers Association three years running.
The Baseball America piece also states that the MLB proposal “completely reorganizes” the minor leagues. There would still be triple-A, double-A, high single-A and low single-A, but teams would be redistributed to make the leagues “more geographically compact.”
The short-season, single A Northwest League, which has featured Vancouver since 2000, would be a full-season, single-A loop, meaning that it would go from a 76-game schedule starting in June to a 140-game schedule beginning in April.
As well, the Baseball America story explained that, under the MLB proposal, “some teams would be asked” to move from single-A to triple-A. Others would be asked to move from triple-A to single-A, and there would be other “less-dramatic moves as well.”
The proposal puts valuations on the teams at the different levels, with triple-A coming in at $20 million and working down to short-season, single-A at $6 million. With that, a team moving up from single-A to triple-A would have to pay $12 million. A team moving from triple-A to single-A would receive $10 million in compensation.
This will excite those fans who hearken back to the days when the C’s were a triple-A team, before those franchise rights moved to Sacramento, Calif., for the 2000 season.
That fan base that believes that Vancouver could succeed again as a triple-A city will point to the fact that the C’s announced attendance average of 6,210 this past season as one of the Toronto Blue Jays’ lower-rung affiliates was better on a per-game basis last year than seven teams in the 16-team triple A Pacific Coast League. That per-game number for the C’s would dip, of course, if they had to play games at the Nat in the less-than-ideal conditions of April and May.
Keep another thing in mind, too. This whole proposal could be merely an opening negotiation ploy, a pitch high-and-tight to grab attention and back the minors off the proverbial plate and make them uneasy. MLB teams have taken flak for the majority of minor-leaguers being underpaid. There have been lawsuits over that matter.
There would be more money to pay minor-leaguers if this goes through, but this first proposal seems to fly right past that. If the MLB gets everything it’s asking for now — and it includes cutting the amateur draft in half to 20 rounds — the changes would be startling. Lawyers are likely lining up on both sides as we speak.
Dunn and the rest of the C’s brass will focus on getting ready for the June 17 season-opener against the Eugene Emeralds at the Nat. They will also certainly have other things on their mind now.