Brewers deal with no minors season
The news expected for weeks, if not months, was made official Tuesday.
Due to the ramifications arising from the coronavirus pandemic, there will be no minor-league baseball in 2020.
“These are unprecedented times for our country and our organization as this is the first time in our history that we’ve had a summer without Minor League Baseball played,” said Minor League Baseball President & CEO Pat O’Conner.
“While this is a sad day for many, this announcement removes the uncertainty surrounding the 2020 season and allows our teams to begin planning for an exciting 2021 season of affordable family entertainment.”
The cancellation of the season will have a profound effect on every level of the game, and be felt for years to come.
With dozens of minorleague organizations already potentially on the chopping block because of Major League Baseball’s attempts at streamlining – the Milwaukee Brewers’ rookie-league affiliate, the Rocky Mountain Vibes, have been mentioned as possibly being one of those teams – others may simply go out of business due to financial hardship.
“I think it’s very difficult for everyone involved – the players, our player development staff, all of the people at each of our affiliates and of course all the fans everywhere,” farm director Tom Flanagan said.
“I think we realize this has a bigger effect on society as we’re seeing, and baseball unfortunately is just a part of that. But I think just the finality of it – even though in recent weeks we thought it was coming and we didn’t like our chances of having a season – hits you hard once you see that press release.”
The Brewers have about 240 minorleague players in their organization this season (not counting those on the 40man roster) spread between the lower developmental levels and the more recognizable affiliates, Class A Wisconsin, advanced Class A Carolina, Class AA Biloxi and Class AAA San Antonio.
For a small-market franchise that relies heavily on its minor-league system such as Milwaukee, losing an entire season’s worth of games is almost impossible to account for even though the handwriting had been on the wall for quite some time while the pandemic raged.
Major-league spring training was halted in the third week of March – right around the time many minor-leaguers were arriving or scheduled to arrive – and about a week later Flanagan and his staff had a plan in place to keep in regular contact with players via Zoom calls, FaceTime or other means.
Best-case scenario would be at some point over the next four to six weeks the curve would begin to flatten again, restrictions would be loosened and the Brewers would be able to bring at least some of their players together for some sort of organized workouts.
But how realistic that vision is remains to be seen.
“The thing we’ve done the most of is just planning for different contingencies,” Flanagan said. “Obviously nobody can control what’s going to happen with
COVID or what’s going to be allowed or not allowed. But in terms of planning, nothing’s off the table.
“We’ve basically planned for all different scenarios – if we’ll be allowed by governmental standards or restrictions. If we we’re allowed to get guys together again we would look forward to doing that, but obviously we’re taking it day by day, and the plans are only as good as the environment will allow.”
In the meantime, players are being asked to do the best they can to continue their development on their own.
“We definitely do not want this to be a wasted year, so the key point we’ve tried to stress to our staff and players is that there’s always an opportunity for each of them to get better,” said Flanagan. “Each team’s in the same boat; we just need to do our best so that there’s some positives we can pull out of this experience.”
Maybe the only silver lining in all this is that injured players will have plenty of time to return to full health, although even medical care and rehab has been negatively impacted by the pandemic with the Brewers’ Maryvale complex in Arizona shut down by MLB mandate for a deep cleaning along with every other spring training site.
The Brewers also will send several of their top prospects to Appleton shortly as part of a 15-player group that will continue training for the next two months as a sort of “taxi squad” for the upcoming truncated major-league season.
The team’s top two prospects, shortstop Brice Turang and left-hander Ethan Small, likely will be part of that group although the Brewers have yet to finalize the list and announce it.
Also, the Brewers will continue to pay all their minor-leaguers through the end of August, president of baseball operations David Stearns announced last week.