The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Braves rise after fantastic road trip
Company owns 32 of 120 minor league affiliates. There’s some unease because of that.
It’s mid-April, and MLB teams are beginning to show us what they can — or can’t — be. Here’s how The AJC views the top 10 teams right now:
1. Atlanta Braves (+2)
What a road trip. The Braves went 5-1 in Miami and Houston, the latter of which was a sweep. The Braves almost lost the finale in South Florida before Marcell Ozuna, perhaps baseball’s best hitter in the early season, saved them with a homer. The finale against the Astros was a typical Braves comeback. Despite Spencer Strider’s injury and Max Fried underwhelming — and with catcher Sean Murphy and second baseman Ozzie Albies sidelined — the Braves keep humming along. The rotation bears watching as the season progresses, but the Braves have overcome multiple injuries to still outpace the rest of MLB thus far.
2. New York Yankees (-1)
The Yankees get leapfrogged by the Braves, but they’re doing just fine. They took two of three in Cleveland and salvaged the series finale in Toronto. The baseball world awaits Aaron Judge’s awakening; he’s hitting .183 through 19 games. The Orioles are coming, but we’ll leave the Yankees up here this week.
3. Baltimore Orioles (+1)
The Orioles just swept the Twins, and their 30 homers led MLB as of Thursday evening. The rotation is flawed behind Corbin Burnes and Grayson Rodriguez because of injuries, so like the Braves, that’ll be something to follow in the coming months. This offense, however, is tremendous. The Orioles have more players than spots. The excess talent should make them a prime candidate to land the most coveted players on the market this July.
4. Cleveland Guardians (+2)
The always overlooked Guardians won series against the Yankees and Red Sox this past week. There aren’t any household names on this team — though Jose Ramirez should be one — and that’s what makes it somewhat charming. How about first baseman Josh Naylor so far? He’s hitting .323 with a .972 OPS. The Guardians come to Atlanta during this homestand.
5. Los Angeles Dodgers (-3)
The Dodgers dropped out of the top three for the first time this year because they’ve lost three of their past four series. Most recently, the Nationals took two of three at Dodger Stadium. Still, Mookie Betts looks primed for an MVP run while Shohei Ohtani and Will Smith have been terrific (though Ohtani is 1 for his past 19 with runners in scoring position, which is a talking point in Southern California). No one is worried about this team, but they haven’t just ripped through the competition out of the gate. The rest of the National League West is thankful.
6. Milwaukee Brewers (+1)
The Brewers are the NL’s Guardians, really. It’s impressive this team has looked so competitive. They’ll have to overcome Christian Yelich’s absence because of a back issue; Yelich was off to a phenomenal start. While Milwaukee just dropped a series to the Padres, it took two of three from the Orioles beforehand. The Brewers have series against the Cardinals and Pirates coming, and that’ll play a role in shaping the NL Central as we approach May.
7. Philadelphia Phillies (+1)
The Phillies just swept the pathetic Rockies and have the (somehow) even worse White Sox this weekend. Ranger Suarez has a 1.73 ERA in four starts, including a shutout against Colorado. The Phillies’ rotation has a 2.54 ERA entering Friday, ranking second best in MLB. We’ll see if the Phillies are good enough to keep pace with the Braves through the summer, but this team once again looks like a dangerous postseason contender regardless.
8. Chicago Cubs (+2)
The Cubs just had a nice West Coast trip, rebounding from losing two of three in San Diego to take series in Seattle and Arizona. Losing outfielder Seiya Suzuki (oblique strain) for an estimated month hurts, especially since the Cubs have already been dealing with injuries, including to ace Justin Steele. Yet Craig Counsell’s group has stayed above .500. Cody Bellinger is showing signs of life, collecting a hit in four consecutive games after going hitless over the previous four. This looks like a division contender.
9. Kansas City Royals (-2)
The Royals lost a series to the rejuvenated Mets before beating the White Sox in two of three. Would you believe the Royals, at plus40, have MLB’s best run differential? Let’s use this time to applaud Royals legend Salvador Perez. The 33-yearold catcher, the last remaining individual from the 2015 World Series winner, is hitting .324 with a .944 OPS through 18 games. Royals fans must love seeing the past (Perez) and future (Bobby Witt Jr.) thriving alongside one another. The rest of the lineup, though, could use some work for this team to reach those 2014-15 heights again. But this once-rudderless franchise is trending in the right direction.
10. San Diego Padres (NR)
If you watched the Padres’ series at Dodger Stadium, perhaps you noticed this team appears different from its past iterations. There’s a little more cohesion here, at least to this point. The Padres aren’t as talented as a year ago after losing Juan Soto, Blake Snell and Josh Hader, but maybe this group fits together better under new manager Mike Shildt. There are several teams that could’ve argued slotting here at 10, but we’ll give credit to the Padres.
WAPPINGERS FALLS, N.Y. — The artificial turf at Heritage Financial Park is new. So is the right-field wall that opens wide enough to haul concert equipment through. The party deck is sponsored by a brewery that is 10 miles away. Giant windows have been installed around the corporate event space overlooking left field. The renovated home clubhouse, where the Hudson Valley Renegades dress before games, has two indoor batting cages flanked by motion-capture technology.
This is Class A baseball in 2024: quirky and local but also a booming business. Minor league attendance is up and approaching pre-pandemic levels. New ballparks are being built. Existing franchises are selling at high prices.
At the center of this transformation is Diamond Baseball Holdings, a 3-year-old company that owns more than one-quarter of all minor league clubs. From a ground-up franchise in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to established clubs in Louisville, Kentucky, and Lansing, Michigan, to its most recent purchase of the Harrisburg Senators in Pennsylvania, Diamond Baseball Holdings now owns 32 of 120 affiliates, and its founders say they still are “aggressively in acquisition mode.”
“We are agnostic to geography. We are agnostic to club affiliation,” said Pat Battle, the ownership and management group’s executive chair. “If you’re one of the 120, we are interested.”
Growing a portfolio, and a partnership
The group’s portfolio has grown at a rate, and to a size, that would have been impossible five years ago. It is a byproduct of MLB’s 2020 takeover of the minor leagues, which yanked affiliated baseball out of more than 40 communities and shifted minor league control to the MLB office. Commissioner Rob Manfred’s One Baseball initiative seeks to put every aspect of the game under one umbrella — that of the major league team owners.
In the middle of that plan is DBH, founded by Battle, a former college sports licensing executive whose dad, Bill, once coached Tennessee’s football team, and Peter Freund, a longtime minor league owner. The group is financially backed by the private equity investment firm Silver Lake.
“We felt like, man, if we have Major League Baseball aligned with minor league baseball really for the first time ever, this could be an unbelievably exciting time to do it,” said Freund, the group’s CEO.
Beyond its ownership role, Diamond Baseball Holdings has a strategic partnership with MLB to help negotiate national sponsorships and branding opportunities on behalf of all minor league franchises. It also has a role in consumer product licensing for all 120 teams.
MLB declined to speak on the record about the ownership group, and some minor league owners declined as well, noting that Freund and Battle are close with Manfred. The owners who did agree to talk about DBH said it has paid good prices for teams and seems to run them well; it has largely retained local staff and invested in communities. Yet there are concerns about its outsize influence in an evolving industry, and whether minor league baseball — long considered a mom-and-pop enterprise — can thrive within a massive corporate structure.
“They think they can be a little more efficient, and maybe they can,” one former owner said. “But, again, MiLB is very local. You kind of need the people you need there to sell and all the stuff that has to be done on the ground. They can’t do that corporately.”
There also is some worry that given DBH’s size and reach it could impact MLB’s decision-making — especially as some minor league owners fear that further contraction of teams and even greater MLB control could be in the works.
“Whether you’re a DBH team or not, we’re all in this together,” Battle said. “And we do believe a rising tide lifts all boats. If a nonDBH team has success, it’s great for minor league baseball, and we celebrate that.”
Changes, and opportunities
For more than two decades, Battle built the Collegiate Licensing Co. with his father, Bill. It acquired the licensing rights to more than 200 universities, conferences and bowls before, in 2007, being acquired by IMG to form IMG College. Battle served as that company’s senior corporate VP and CEO for three years.
College sports are big business, but their epicenters are not New York and Chicago. They’re in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Boulder, Colorado; and Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
“I think MLB sees in us people who really understand Scranton and Des Moines,” Battle said. “They’re not the 30 major markets, but they’re real markets and very important communities in this country.”
Battle briefly held an ownership stake in the Augusta GreenJackets and said he read “with interest” in 2020 as MLB took over the minor leagues and introduced a different Player Development League structure. Higher facility standards were put in place. Affiliations shuffled and levels changed. Short-season leagues were eliminated. Three independent teams became affiliates and 43 minor league teams lost affiliation. Minor league operations moved out of the MiLB office in St. Petersburg, Florida, and into MLB’s headquarters in New York.
While some owners felt a rug pulled out from under them, Battle saw a platform being raised, and an opportunity. When he approached the league office, MLB offered reassurance he was reading the tea leaves correctly; it also connected him with a willing partner.
“They saw it as a significant investment in minor league baseball,” Battle said. “It’s exactly what they were looking to do themselves, and within a week or two, I received a call from the commissioner’s office saying you need to meet Peter.”
As a longtime owner of the Memphis Redbirds, Charleston RiverDogs and Williamsport Crosscutters, Freund was an insider.
In October 2021, Diamond Baseball Holdings was born, and in December 2021, backed by Silver Lake, DBH announced an initial acquisition of 10 minor league teams. It added 11 more from December 2022 to June 2023, then three more in the past few weeks.
MLB’s takeover of the minors coincided with the pandemic, which wiped out the 2020 minor league season. Even the franchises that survived contraction faced lost revenue and massive uncertainty. Some owners saw DBH as a lifeline and sold. Other owners shared DBH’s optimism and refused to sell.
“We’re all making money,” said Larry Botel, who has an ownership stake in three minor league teams. “We’re all taking advantage of what MLB is offering us.”
DBH developed a reputation
for buying teams at the high end of perceived value. It acknowledged some skepticism around minor league baseball when it began buying teams, but Freund and Battle believe they have won over most owners.
DBH owns 20 teams at the Class AAA or Class AA level. It owns all four Braves affiliates, three from the Red Sox and one or two from roughly two-thirds of all major league clubs.
Standardizing, while keeping it unique
After taking over a team, the DBH playbook typically involves minimal surface-level changes. DBH has never replaced a general manager upon acquisition. Two of its teams have rebranded — each one dropping the name of its major league affiliate in favor of something more local — and DBH announced plans to relocate two franchises.
Freund, said DBH has purchased 12 new video boards in the past year. They’ve bought in bulk everything from stadium lights to tractors. When the Memphis, Tennessee, playing field fell into disrepair last season, DBH sent grounds crew members from its Springfield, Missouri, and Des Moines, Iowa, affiliates to help fix it.
“You can standardize virtually every aspect of the business” and still remain hyperlocal, Battle said.
DBH said it aims to standardize under the hood while keeping the idiosyncrasies that make minor league baseball unique. Diamond can slather the same nacho cheese across 30 franchises but still carve out space for Rendezvous BBQ in Memphis and Table Talk Pies in Worcester, Massachusetts. “It’s endless what you can do from an economy and a scale standpoint,” Freund said.
DBH does not own any of its ballparks. A majority of minor league teams play in community-owned stadiums and lease the venues. Many teams pay a flat fee to operate the stadium year-round. A minor league season guarantees no more than 75 home games, leaving at least 290 open dates. “The nonbaseball might be our biggest opportunity to activate these ballparks,” Freund said.
The growth and reach of DBH has some people in minor league
baseball pondering the amount of power one ownership group should hold in this evolving landscape.
“From a national sponsorship and a national consumer products perspective, we definitely wear an MiLB hat,” Battle said. “And then as we conduct our business on ticketing, merchandising, locally at our venues, we’re wearing a DBH hat. We don’t see that as conflicted in any way.”
What does the future look like?
Some minor league owners expressed concern that in 2030, when the current Player Development League contracts expire, MLB could further contract the minor leagues, removing the affiliation of another 30 teams — leaving three levels per major league organization — and again raising the standards so that smaller operators will have a harder time meeting the requirements.
DBH said it did not expect or even want further contraction, which might also be more difficult now that minor league players are members of the MLB Players Association, which will fight the loss of jobs.
And what does Silver Lake, the private equity money behind DBH, hope to gain from this?
“Private equity is probably bad for everything except for the people that they’re buying things from, and I have a larger concern for baseball elsewhere,” one owner said.
But, he added, he thought Battle was “better at what he’s trying to do for minor league baseball than anybody.”
Some in baseball speculated early on that DBH and Silver Lake were gathering teams to bundle and resell as a package; Freund and Battle said they haven’t discussed selling. “There’s just too much ahead to even think about that,” Freund said.
Any sale of the DBH portfolio would have to be approved by Major League Baseball, but few in minor league baseball think DBH is acting without a general understanding of what MLB might do.
Said one former owner who sold his franchise to DBH: “Nobody else would be doing this if they didn’t have some understanding of what Manfred wanted, or, at the very least, his blessing.”