Minor issues to face

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 minor league teams like Brooklyn and Hudson Valley, moving up in class from Rookie League to High A, or the formerly independent league Somerset Patriots, suddenly in the Double A Eastern League, their franchise values have substantially increased in contrast to the teams in Pioneer League that has 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 2012 to 1,818 by 2019. It was

The Staten Island Yankees are one of the teams going out of business under MLB’s new minor league contraction plan. 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 last 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. Their suit against the Yankees is baseless in that they’re claiming they had assurances from the Yankees they would “always be a minor league partner,” but that was under the old system in which clubs had PDC’s (player development contracts) with the minor leagues. Those have been eliminated. The Staten Island owners also asserted that as recently as last March, Yankee officials were expressing contentment with Staten Island as their affiliate — but that was because the Yankees were one of the few major league teams opposing the contraction plan and hoped the short season rookie leagues would be maintained.

As part of the realignment, there are apparently going to be two new six-team High A leagues — the Northeast League which will include Hudson Valley, Brooklyn and probably team in Aberdeen from the New York Penn League, the Phillies’ Lakewood franchise formerly in the South Atlantic League, Wilmington f rom the Carolina League and one other team — along with a similar league of west coast teams. I’m told there will be numerous shifting of teams in the Triple A International and Pacific Coast Leagues, again for geographic purposes.

Finally, there is the newly created amateur MLB Draft League of, presumably, the top eligible prospects heading into the draft. It is expected to be a six-team league including Trenton, the Yankees’ former Double A Eastern League affiliate, and four teams from the depleted New York Penn League, playing a 68-game season from late May to mid-August. It’s going to be interesting to see how this league — which is designed to be a “bridge” for prospects from when their high school and college seasons end to the amateur draft in mid-July — pans out. The major league clubs love the idea because it will allow their scouts “unprecedented visibility” and limited travel to see and gather data on the top prospects leading up to the draft. Except that when it comes to the really top (projected first or second round) prospects, their agent/advisors will no doubt discourage them from participating in the league for fear of injury, and for most of the pitchers, there will surely be limitations on innings and pitch counts.

Again, those former shortseason affiliated teams may be grateful to MLB for providing them a league to continue operating, but their franchise values will have nearly evaporated. After the draft, they’ll be losing almost all their players and will have to scramble for all the undrafted and released players to re-stock their rosters. As a result, quality of play the second half of the season figures to be greatly diluted.