Contraction plan leaves many out in cold

NEW YORK — Little by little, MLB’s great minor league contraction plan is being unveiled with individual teams announcing they are either being saved, moving up or down in status or, in the case of the Staten Island Yankees, simply going out of business.

Apparently, there are still some nagging issues to be worked out in the streamline plan that has reduced the minor leagues from 160 to 120 teams, limited every major league team to four affiliations — AAA, AA, High A and Low A — and includes significant geographic realignments to the leagues designed to reduce travel costs.

For New York minor league teams like Brooklyn and Hudson Valley, moving up in class from Rookie League to High A, or the formerly independent league Somerset, Mass., Patriots, suddenly in the Double A Eastern League, their franchise values have substantially increased in contrast to the teams in the Pioneer League that have been demoted from an affiliated Rookie League to an independent league. For those owners, though they may be grateful to at least still be part of organized ball and not be contracted entirely, the value of their franchises are about 90% less than they were.

Then there are teams like Staten Island and 10-20 others which, when the music stopped, have been left without an affiliation and a franchise that is suddenly worth nothing. In the case of Staten Island, however, the owners there have no one to blame but themselves for their fate. After purchasing the team from Mandalay Sports Entertainment in 2012, they gradually ran the franchise downhill, with poor promoting and marketing, the attendance dropping from an average 5,664 in 2011 to 1,848 by 2019. It was partly for this reason the Yankees were no longer interested in keeping Staten Island as an affiliate, certainly not anything above short season Rookie League which has been eliminated.

After learning they were one of the teams in the short season New York Penn League being contracted, the Staten Island owners announced on Thursday they were terminating operations and, at the same time, suing MLB and the Yankees. They were offered the option of joining the independent Atlantic League which has a partnership with MLB, but they declined.