Braves GM ready for games to resume
♦ The Rome Braves minor league team will be in the high A classification and GM David Cross says much about the season is still up in the air.
The Rome Braves are looking forward to a return to the field in 2021.
They don’t know when that’s going to happen, and they’re still not sure exactly who they’re going to play yet, General Manager David Cross said.
Apart from not just playing ball, there are many economic ramifications that stem from a lost season because of the pandemic, he told the Rome-Floyd Chamber Economic Development committee Friday morning.
Local hotels probably felt the sting the greatest. Without a season, visiting teams, scouts, umpires and other behind-the-scenes folks weren’t in town from April to early September.
“Between us and the visiting teams that come in, it’s probably between $150,000 and $200,000 that’s spent just in Rome,” Cross said. The ripple effect is lost hotel and motel taxes, lost revenue in local restaurants and bars in the hotel lounges.
On top of that, the Braves spend upwards of half a million dollars in food that is sold at the stadium during the season.
“We didn’t really buy a whole lot. That affects our food distributor who affects local people who work in the community,” Cross said.
The Rome Braves have over a million dollars in payroll. Players on the Braves roster did receive some compensation during the lost season but much their staff consists of part-time seasonal employees.
“(Those) people don’t have that discretionary income to spend,” Cross said.
Most of those who had already bought sponsorships or season tickets agreed to roll those packages into the upcoming season. While that’s good, most of the funds that came in last year have already been spent on things like salaries for those fulltime employees who did continue to work.
On the flip side, material used for field maintenance purchased last year is still, for the most part, available, so those costs might not be as high this year.
The 2021 version of the Rome Braves will bring in a higher level of talent since the Rome team is now the high A affiliate of the Braves franchise.
He doesn’t know the name of the new league yet, but that it will include teams as far north as New York. The Rome Braves may not travel that far
this year, since efforts are being made to cut costs, which means that Rome may not play each and every team in the new league this year.
“We’re still looking at the same number of games (140 in the new league),” Cross said. “This year may be a little different.”
There have been hints that Major League Baseball may move back the pre-season action in Florida.
“I’m not in those conversations. But I get the economic impact, because if they can push it back and get to where they can get more people in the seats that’s a greater economic impact for them,” Cross said.
“We don’t have the dynamics of what (our) seating capacity will be this year,” Cross said. “That’s going to affect us economically because if you can only do 50% capacity so that’s only going to be 2,500 people.”
Approximately 40 cities lost their minor league baseball franchises during the shake-up of the past year, but Cross said that many of those communities will have teams in summer collegiate level leagues.
“They do provide a high quality of baseball, but at the same time, and one the things that were striving to do here, is provide a high quality of entertainment for the community,” Cross said.