We lost our minor league team in Mobile, AL to Huntsville, AL this year after 20 years. Our team changed parent teams a few times, City is trying to bring a new team in. With these news, not sure if that will be a good idea.

Don't see the Asheville Tourist, who have been around for 122 years, getting rubbed out.

(10-20-2019 10:25 AM)Rube Dali Wrote:  

(10-20-2019 09:57 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(10-20-2019 09:55 AM)Rube Dali Wrote:  Not once in this thread has the most radical idea been discussed at all. Apparently there is a movement to have AAA cities become A cities and A cities become AAA cities.

I know a lot of Nashville Sounds fans would be very displeased if the franchise was moved from AAA to A.

You don't have to think about that. It won't happen.

My thought about this radical realignment, and I thought about it for a bit, is how much of this is MLB trying to make the minors more appealing to suburban and urban fans of the majors, at the expense of rural America?

Definitely starting to put some teams there. SugarLand, Gwinnett, Long Island, among others.

Having your top minor league team near the MLB team is good for travel on short notice, but I could see MLB teams not wanting high minor league teams nearby. The only minor league teams near the Yankees and Mets are Short-Season A and Independent. If there were AA teams in Brooklyn and/or Staten Island, they could be a cheaper alternative and hurt MLB attendance.

(10-20-2019 09:04 AM)Rube Dali Wrote:  Someone on another forum did a calculation of who is in trouble and who isn't:

-- Staten Island (NYY) and Brooklyn (NYM) would likely be the two NYPL teams moving up to the AA Eastern League
-- Aberdeen (BAL) would likely be the NYPL team moving to the high-A Carolina League
-- If you sort all 160 current affected teams, the top 120 (the projected cutoff point) would all have a minimum of 5000 seats at their stadiums. The two independent teams (St. Paul and Sugar Land) have capacities of 7000-7500
-- All 10 teams in the Appalachian League are in the danger zone, having capacities of 4000 or less, but 7 of those 10 teams are owned by their MLB affiliates
-- The other Rookie-Adv level league, the Pioneer League, currently has 5 out of 8 teams in the safety zone (including Colorado-owned Grand Junction), but 2 of those 5 would be bumped out by the two independents
-- High-A Carolina League would have 3 teams in trouble (Down East (TEX owned), Fayetteville (HOU owned), Lynchburg)
-- High-A Florida State League would have 1 team in trouble (Daytona)
-- High-A California League would have 3 teams in trouble (Modesto (SEA owned), San Jose (SF owned), Visalia)
-- Low-A South Atlantic League would have 3 teams in trouble (Asheville, Hagerstown, Kannapolis)
-- Low-A Midwest League would have 3 teams in trouble (Beloit, Bowling Green, Burlington)

Link?

(10-21-2019 01:50 PM)EvanJ Wrote:  Having your top minor league team near the MLB team is good for travel on short notice, but I could see MLB teams not wanting high minor league teams nearby. The only minor league teams near the Yankees and Mets are Short-Season A and Independent. If there were AA teams in Brooklyn and/or Staten Island, they could be a cheaper alternative and hurt MLB attendance.

The AA team in Frisco hasn't hurt the Rangers, and the AAA team in Gwinnett hasn't hurt the Braves. There's got to be a reason MLB and MiLB are floating the idea of moving St. Paul and Sugar Land to affiliated baseball (I presume those teams would be affiliated with the Twins and Astros). With the difference in price points, the minor league team can fill a niche that the major league team can't.

People know going in that they're not getting major league quality when they pay minor league prices. They're just going to have fun at the ballpark, at a fraction of the price, and closer to home. In the meantime, going to a major league game is still special, and commands the premium price for those willing to pay. It's like the difference between a Broadway play and a community theater production.

(10-21-2019 08:25 PM)seaking4steel Wrote:  

(10-20-2019 09:04 AM)Rube Dali Wrote:  Someone on another forum did a calculation of who is in trouble and who isn't:

-- Staten Island (NYY) and Brooklyn (NYM) would likely be the two NYPL teams moving up to the AA Eastern League
-- Aberdeen (BAL) would likely be the NYPL team moving to the high-A Carolina League
-- If you sort all 160 current affected teams, the top 120 (the projected cutoff point) would all have a minimum of 5000 seats at their stadiums. The two independent teams (St. Paul and Sugar Land) have capacities of 7000-7500
-- All 10 teams in the Appalachian League are in the danger zone, having capacities of 4000 or less, but 7 of those 10 teams are owned by their MLB affiliates
-- The other Rookie-Adv level league, the Pioneer League, currently has 5 out of 8 teams in the safety zone (including Colorado-owned Grand Junction), but 2 of those 5 would be bumped out by the two independents
-- High-A Carolina League would have 3 teams in trouble (Down East (TEX owned), Fayetteville (HOU owned), Lynchburg)
-- High-A Florida State League would have 1 team in trouble (Daytona)
-- High-A California League would have 3 teams in trouble (Modesto (SEA owned), San Jose (SF owned), Visalia)
-- Low-A South Atlantic League would have 3 teams in trouble (Asheville, Hagerstown, Kannapolis)
-- Low-A Midwest League would have 3 teams in trouble (Beloit, Bowling Green, Burlington)

Link?

No link. Just one man's off the cuff calculation.

(10-20-2019 11:40 PM)Rabonchild Wrote:  

(10-20-2019 09:04 AM)Rube Dali Wrote:  Someone on another forum did a calculation of who is in trouble and who isn't:

-- Staten Island (NYY) and Brooklyn (NYM) would likely be the two NYPL teams moving up to the AA Eastern League
-- Aberdeen (BAL) would likely be the NYPL team moving to the high-A Carolina League
-- If you sort all 160 current affected teams, the top 120 (the projected cutoff point) would all have a minimum of 5000 seats at their stadiums. The two independent teams (St. Paul and Sugar Land) have capacities of 7000-7500
-- All 10 teams in the Appalachian League are in the danger zone, having capacities of 4000 or less, but 7 of those 10 teams are owned by their MLB affiliates
-- The other Rookie-Adv level league, the Pioneer League, currently has 5 out of 8 teams in the safety zone (including Colorado-owned Grand Junction), but 2 of those 5 would be bumped out by the two independents
-- High-A Carolina League would have 3 teams in trouble (Down East (TEX owned), Fayetteville (HOU owned), Lynchburg)
-- High-A Florida State League would have 1 team in trouble (Daytona)
-- High-A California League would have 3 teams in trouble (Modesto (SEA owned), San Jose (SF owned), Visalia)
-- Low-A South Atlantic League would have 3 teams in trouble (Asheville, Hagerstown, Kannapolis)
-- Low-A Midwest League would have 3 teams in trouble (Beloit, Bowling Green, Burlington)

Kannapolis will be playing in a new $52,000,000 ball park next year. New hotels a block away, restaurants, retail stores & a convention center also being built two blocks from the park. Condos, apartments and a large retirement village are being built one to four blocks away. And a new hospital is also being built just a few miles from the ball park.

Losing the team after building a brand new stadium would be the most Kannapolis thing ever.

(10-20-2019 08:43 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I don’t see any AAA markets that are geographic outliers or underperforming to the point that they deserve demotion to single A.

Maybe Gwinnett but the Atlanta Braves own them. The Mets bought the team in Syracuse last year but the State and County are doing a huge renovation so I think they should be safe. Those are the two lowest attendance (wise) in the IL.

Pawtucket is moving to Worcester in 2021. Worcester is building a brand new complex.

The IL North is super tight geographic wise.

(10-20-2019 09:20 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(10-20-2019 08:43 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I don’t see any AAA markets that are geographic outliers or underperforming to the point that they deserve demotion to single A.

Somebody's gotta go to make room for Dayton.

Fort Wayne and Dayton would be a no-brainer for the IL with Toledo, Indy, Louisville and Columbus nearby.

The teams in Charleston, Greenville, and Columbia would probably be good fits for AA or even AAA. Maybe Augusta too.

It is an antiquated system with minor league baseball, but dropping 40 teams would really hurt some of these small “one-horse” towns.

It still doesn’t make sense why Jackson, TN, a market of 130,000, the 307th largest MSA in the nation, smaller than Johnstown, PA, Wheeling, WV, and 50,000 smaller than Columbia, MO, has Double-A baseball.

Meanwhile, Orlando, a market of over 2.5 million, has no minor league team at all.

(10-23-2019 04:40 PM)sctvman Wrote:  The teams in Charleston, Greenville, and Columbia would probably be good fits for AA or even AAA. Maybe Augusta too.

It is an antiquated system with minor league baseball, but dropping 40 teams would really hurt some of these small “one-horse” towns.

It still doesn’t make sense why Jackson, TN, a market of 130,000, the 307th largest MSA in the nation, smaller than Johnstown, PA, Wheeling, WV, and 50,000 smaller than Columbia, MO, has Double-A baseball.

Meanwhile, Orlando, a market of over 2.5 million, has no minor league team at all.

Too much goes on in Orlando and the only viable stadium (now that the stadium in Kissimmee being converted to a soccer stadium) is 20 miles from downtown at Disney. Always thought that a stadium in the Maitland \Altamonte Springs area should have happened to keep baseball in town.

Orlando is horrible for baseball. Sprawling metro, tons of newcomers with allegiance to old sports teams and hot and wet from May on till the end of the season

(10-23-2019 09:38 PM)TexanMark Wrote:  Orlando is horrible for baseball. Sprawling metro, tons of newcomers with allegiance to old sports teams and hot and wet from May on till the end of the season

Maybe they should move the Citrus league out of Florida!

There are plenty of training facilities nearby.

(10-23-2019 10:39 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(10-23-2019 09:38 PM)TexanMark Wrote:  Orlando is horrible for baseball. Sprawling metro, tons of newcomers with allegiance to old sports teams and hot and wet from May on till the end of the season

Maybe they should move the Citrus league out of Florida!

There are plenty of training facilities nearby.

Not really. The Astros left a few years back and their stadium is being converted to house Orlando City's training facility and Disney is Disney. The team that played in Kissimmee the last few years is looking for a home.

(10-23-2019 04:40 PM)sctvman Wrote:  The teams in Charleston, Greenville, and Columbia would probably be good fits for AA or even AAA. Maybe Augusta too.

It is an antiquated system with minor league baseball, but dropping 40 teams would really hurt some of these small “one-horse” towns.

It still doesn’t make sense why Jackson, TN, a market of 130,000, the 307th largest MSA in the nation, smaller than Johnstown, PA, Wheeling, WV, and 50,000 smaller than Columbia, MO, has Double-A baseball.

Meanwhile, Orlando, a market of over 2.5 million, has no minor league team at all.

This might be me being influenced by living in Dayton, but I'm going to throw out a theory.

TLDR: There's not much economic difference between a full-season A and AAA franchise. Same product, same number of games.

Economically and as an entertainment business, there is minimal difference between a full-season single-A and a triple-A franchise. You're selling a non-major league baseball experience, a night at the ballpark in an intimate setting.

You spend a lot of time and energy:
-- working community relationships to get people in the door. "Empty seats buy no hot dogs and $7 craft beers." Make heavy use of discounting strategies to get people coming back, forming a habit of giving you money. Reach out to every church group, school, scout group, youth athletic league to sell discounted group-ticket packages. If eight people stand together waiting for a crosswalk to turn green, they get a pitch in the mail for a ticket package.
-- making sure your merch and branding are attractive and varied.

From that perspective, does it make any difference if your players are Single-A 18 year olds fresh out of high school or triple-A 20 year olds with a couple of years in the minors or in college ball? Home team winning is better than them losing, but not by a whole lot in terms of revenue, and it's not like if Dayton moved to AAA they'd win or lose more games--they'd have AAA players vs AAA players.

*Maybe* if Dayton moved to AAA and stopped being a Reds affiliate, you'd lose some Reds loyalists?

Back to what SCTVMan was saying, as long as the market is big enough to support Minor League Baseball, the level is almost trivial.

Asheville Tourists just renewed their lease with the city's stadium and the city announced a big revamp of the stadium too. I don't see them being shuffled out of Single A ball.

An interesting article. This one mentions different options including creating (reviving?) a AAA league to cut down on travel.

https://ballparkdigest.com/2019/10/24/ml...t-the-end/

Same was how scouting has evolved greatly in the last 25 years to where high first round picks are reliably better players over time and even your high dollar international teenager signings are more predictive, if anyone's read the MVP machine, player development has been evolving rapidly the last few years. To the point where having whole teams of "org guys" to play around the couple prospects per team you see in the very low minors is making less sense than ever. And teams are certainly getting more interested in having their youngest prospects doing more specialized work in their complexes as well.

What's weird is seeing how MLB seems to be trying to spin it as a side effect of looking to pay the players in the minors enough to live/train on rather than MLB teams getting better at talent identification and development. The one good piece/concession I do is is this idea of the "Dream League" where at least the teams shuttled out of formal, affiliated ball would play with teams of those fringy/undrafted guys who normally would get drafted late to fill out rosters (almost always college seniors) and still occasionally turn into something a little exposure. But even that is itself kind of a targeted attack on indy ball.

(10-24-2019 07:41 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(10-23-2019 04:40 PM)sctvman Wrote:  The teams in Charleston, Greenville, and Columbia would probably be good fits for AA or even AAA. Maybe Augusta too.

It is an antiquated system with minor league baseball, but dropping 40 teams would really hurt some of these small “one-horse” towns.

It still doesn’t make sense why Jackson, TN, a market of 130,000, the 307th largest MSA in the nation, smaller than Johnstown, PA, Wheeling, WV, and 50,000 smaller than Columbia, MO, has Double-A baseball.

Meanwhile, Orlando, a market of over 2.5 million, has no minor league team at all.

This might be me being influenced by living in Dayton, but I'm going to throw out a theory.

TLDR: There's not much economic difference between a full-season A and AAA franchise. Same product, same number of games.

Economically and as an entertainment business, there is minimal difference between a full-season single-A and a triple-A franchise. You're selling a non-major league baseball experience, a night at the ballpark in an intimate setting.

You spend a lot of time and energy:
-- working community relationships to get people in the door. "Empty seats buy no hot dogs and $7 craft beers." Make heavy use of discounting strategies to get people coming back, forming a habit of giving you money. Reach out to every church group, school, scout group, youth athletic league to sell discounted group-ticket packages. If eight people stand together waiting for a crosswalk to turn green, they get a pitch in the mail for a ticket package.
-- making sure your merch and branding are attractive and varied.

From that perspective, does it make any difference if your players are Single-A 18 year olds fresh out of high school or triple-A 20 year olds with a couple of years in the minors or in college ball? Home team winning is better than them losing, but not by a whole lot in terms of revenue, and it's not like if Dayton moved to AAA they'd win or lose more games--they'd have AAA players vs AAA players.

*Maybe* if Dayton moved to AAA and stopped being a Reds affiliate, you'd lose some Reds loyalists?

Back to what SCTVMan was saying, as long as the market is big enough to support Minor League Baseball, the level is almost trivial.

Agree with those things. The only difference is with an AA or AAA team you get more MLB rehab stints than you get with an A-ball team. For example, with the RiverDogs being a Yankees affiliate, the vast majority of rehabbing players go through Tampa (Yankees spring training), then go to Trenton or Scranton.

You might get one rehabbing player a year while Scranton gets one literally every 2-3 weeks.

A-Rod coming through Charleston put 8,000 butts in the seats for 2 games in 2013. Gary Sanchez came for one game this year.

OTOH, the Braves send players through Rome (their SAL affiliate) all the time. Tim Hudson did a rehab start against the RiverDogs a few years back in Charleston. Jon Lester and Carl Pavano also did rehab starts.

The RiverDogs only had 7 games of 69 below 3,000 fans this year. The stadium seats 6,000. Columbia with 9,000+ seats had 22 below 3,000.