The biggest new money making machines is the Summer College Leagues. You get the highest attendance months with the best weather - June, July, and August. Plus you have no player salaries. That is the gold mine right now over Indy Ball.

But Triple A a revival of the old American Association to make 3 leagues would be smart and cut down on travel.

The one league that should be on the chopping block in terms of attendance and support is the Florida State League, but it has the best facilities which what the MLB teams like because they are the spring training homes.

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

True. I didn't realize this until I lived in Fort Worth and went to a couple of independent league games. For the fan, minor league baseball is minor league baseball. It's all about having fun.

The biggest differences I can see are sizes of the ballparks (AAA generally has bigger ballparks) and the sense of prestige for a city. If you're a minor league city, you want to be in the biggest minor league possible, just for the prestige of it. But, those things don't always line up. For instance, there are no AA leagues west of Texas. There are no A leagues between Iowa and California.

As mentioned upthread, Jackson, TN is too small for a AA franchise. A city like Toledo likes being in AAA with larger cities such as Columbus, Indianapolis and Louisville, rather than single A with cities such as Lansing, South Bend, and Fort Wayne. There is a sense of prestige in keeping company with larger markets.

At the end of the day, minor league baseball is minor league baseball. We're a long way from a deal between MLB and MiLB.

Ballpark Digest has more on the back-and-forth between the Majors and Minors and...surprise! It's not about how many people can your stadium accommodate, rather, it's the facilities, stupid.

Quote:One important thing to remember: what MLB considers on the facilities front is totally different than what fans interact with during the course of a game. For a Major League team, a facility is defined strictly as the player amenities: clubhouse, workout area, support spaces like a kitchen or player lounge, and enclosed batting/pitching cages. It doesn’t appear as though on-field upgrades play any role in this evaluation: the Lowell Spinners (Short Season A; NY-Penn League) are targeted for contraction even though team ownership installed new high-grade LED lighting system and new turf over the past few years at LeLacheur Park. And fan spaces, attendance or market performance or potential certainly don’t play a role in the MLB evaluations.

But then again: MLB is not being very precise about what exactly constitutes an acceptable facility. One of the biggest factors fueling the growth of Minor League Baseball in recent decades was the introduction of facilities standards covering every aspect of a ballpark, ranging from the number of urinals in fan restrooms to the minimum size of a player clubhouse. This gave MiLB a road map for expectations when negotiating for new or renovated ballparks.

If this comes to pass I’d be really curious on how this impacts college baseball. With no short season leagues the need to have the draft before the College World Series is diminished. This could be a good way to resolve the inherent unfairness to northern schools by moving the start of the college season to later in the Spring. ESPN, with its ACC and SEC networks, would probably be game for having more live sports inventory in May-July if the CWS moved till the end of July.

Has anyone found an actual break down of what they want this to look like and whose on the docket for promotion/demotion.

(10-24-2019 04:20 PM)MissouriStateBears Wrote:  But Triple A a revival of the old American Association to make 3 leagues would be smart and cut down on travel.

The one league that should be on the chopping block in terms of attendance and support is the Florida State League, but it has the best facilities which what the MLB teams like because they are the spring training homes.

This would be the third revival of the American Association (not counting the current indy league).

The FSL is redundant with the GCL. Just cut out the GCL teams and have the FSL ones take their place.

I guess that I picked a bad time to become a fan of the Bristol Pirates and Greensboro Grasshoppers. :(

(10-24-2019 04:20 PM)MissouriStateBears Wrote:  But Triple A a revival of the old American Association to make 3 leagues would be smart and cut down on travel.

PCL - Colorado Springs*, Salt Lake, Sacramaneto, Fresno, Reno, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, El Paso

AA 4.0 - San Antonio, Round Rock, Oklahoma City, Wichita, Omaha, Iowa, Memphis, Nashville, Louisville, Indianapolis, Toledo, Columbus

IL - Pawtucket, Binghamton, Rochester, Buffalo, Lehigh Valley, Scranton, Norfolk, Gwinnett, Charlotte, Durham

*Downgrade Tacoma to the Northwest League (Class A), move Colorado Springs from Pioneer League (Rookie Advanced) to the Pacific Coast League (AAA), and move Boise from the Northwest League to thr Pioneer League.

(10-24-2019 09:36 PM)chargeradio Wrote:  

(10-24-2019 04:20 PM)MissouriStateBears Wrote:  But Triple A a revival of the old American Association to make 3 leagues would be smart and cut down on travel.

PCL - Colorado Springs*, Salt Lake, Sacramaneto, Fresno, Reno, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, El Paso

AA 4.0 - San Antonio, Round Rock, Oklahoma City, Wichita, Omaha, Iowa, Memphis, Nashville, Louisville, Indianapolis, Toledo, Columbus

IL - Pawtucket, Binghamton, Rochester, Buffalo, Lehigh Valley, Scranton, Norfolk, Gwinnett, Charlotte, Durham

*Downgrade Tacoma to the Northwest League (Class A), move Colorado Springs from Pioneer League (Rookie Advanced) to the Pacific Coast League (AAA), and move Boise from the Northwest League to thr Pioneer League.

I think you mean Syracuse instead of Binghamton?

(10-24-2019 09:36 PM)chargeradio Wrote:  

(10-24-2019 04:20 PM)MissouriStateBears Wrote:  But Triple A a revival of the old American Association to make 3 leagues would be smart and cut down on travel.

PCL - Colorado Springs*, Salt Lake, Sacramaneto, Fresno, Reno, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, El Paso

AA 4.0 - San Antonio, Round Rock, Oklahoma City, Wichita, Omaha, Iowa, Memphis, Nashville, Louisville, Indianapolis, Toledo, Columbus

IL - Pawtucket, Binghamton, Rochester, Buffalo, Lehigh Valley, Scranton, Norfolk, Gwinnett, Charlotte, Durham

*Downgrade Tacoma to the Northwest League (Class A), move Colorado Springs from Pioneer League (Rookie Advanced) to the Pacific Coast League (AAA), and move Boise from the Northwest League to thr Pioneer League.

Pawtucket is moving to Worcester as soon as their new ballpark is built, probably in 2021.

That AA has six sets of great travel partners, especially now that the New Orleans team is moving to Wichita.

I have no clue what cities have the facilities MLB is looking for (locker rooms, indoor batting cages, etc.). That will go a long way in determining who stays and who goes. Reading between the lines, it looks like most of the realignment and contraction will occur at the lower levels. But, if MLB gets their way, single A teams will have the opportunity to buy their way up to AAA, and AAA teams could take a payoff to move as far down as single A.

(10-24-2019 08:06 PM)CarlSmithCenter Wrote:  If this comes to pass I’d be really curious on how this impacts college baseball. With no short season leagues the need to have the draft before the College World Series is diminished. This could be a good way to resolve the inherent unfairness to northern schools by moving the start of the college season to later in the Spring. ESPN, with its ACC and SEC networks, would probably be game for having more live sports inventory in May-July if the CWS moved till the end of July.

Now, the rationale is that the NCAA year ends at the end of June ... which means among other things that a school might be in a different conference.

But the conference championships could be wrapped up by relatively late in June and have Regionals and Super-Regionals bracketing the All-Star break and that seems like it would let the college baseball season start two or three weeks later.

Dang, Columbia just got a minor league team too

If this goes through I think Columbia will still be safe. They want to split up the Sally League and have the 6 southernmost teams remain, which would be Rome, Augusta, Asheville, Greenville, Columbia and Charleston.

(10-25-2019 09:17 AM)CarlSmithCenter Wrote:  If this goes through I think Columbia will still be safe. They want to split up the Sally League and have the 6 southernmost teams remain, which would be Rome, Augusta, Asheville, Greenville, Columbia and Charleston.

Going to piss off a lot of people if they close up the Hickory Crawdads, Kannapolis Canon Ballers, and the Greensboro Grasshoppers.

(10-24-2019 08:06 PM)CarlSmithCenter Wrote:  If this comes to pass I’d be really curious on how this impacts college baseball. With no short season leagues the need to have the draft before the College World Series is diminished. This could be a good way to resolve the inherent unfairness to northern schools by moving the start of the college season to later in the Spring. ESPN, with its ACC and SEC networks, would probably be game for having more live sports inventory in May-July if the CWS moved till the end of July.

At some point we have to remember these are students. The school year ends for a lot of schools in May. It is a little ridiculous that the season would stretch to the end of July.

Additionally, a lot of the players also want to play in the wood bat leagues in Cape Cod, Alaska, etc.

(10-25-2019 09:33 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  

(10-25-2019 09:17 AM)CarlSmithCenter Wrote:  If this goes through I think Columbia will still be safe. They want to split up the Sally League and have the 6 southernmost teams remain, which would be Rome, Augusta, Asheville, Greenville, Columbia and Charleston.

Going to piss off a lot of people if they close up the Hickory Crawdads, Kannapolis Canon Ballers, and the Greensboro Grasshoppers.

I don't have a link but what I read was that the 8 northern teams would be put into a new mid-Atlantic low-A league, which would be Hickory, Kannapolis, Greensboro, Delmarva, Hagerstown, Lakewood, West Virginia and Lexington.

(10-25-2019 11:24 AM)CarlSmithCenter Wrote:  

(10-25-2019 09:33 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  

(10-25-2019 09:17 AM)CarlSmithCenter Wrote:  If this goes through I think Columbia will still be safe. They want to split up the Sally League and have the 6 southernmost teams remain, which would be Rome, Augusta, Asheville, Greenville, Columbia and Charleston.

Going to piss off a lot of people if they close up the Hickory Crawdads, Kannapolis Canon Ballers, and the Greensboro Grasshoppers.

I don't have a link but what I read was that the 8 northern teams would be put into a new mid-Atlantic low-A league, which would be Hickory, Kannapolis, Greensboro, Delmarva, Hagerstown, Lakewood, West Virginia and Lexington.

Hmmm, thanks! Wonder why they'd split Hickory and Asheville considering the travel time by bus would be around 50 minutes.

(10-25-2019 09:33 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  

(10-25-2019 09:17 AM)CarlSmithCenter Wrote:  If this goes through I think Columbia will still be safe. They want to split up the Sally League and have the 6 southernmost teams remain, which would be Rome, Augusta, Asheville, Greenville, Columbia and Charleston.

Going to piss off a lot of people if they close up the Hickory Crawdads, Kannapolis Canon Ballers, and the Greensboro Grasshoppers.

Greensboro is usually near the top in SAL attendance. I doubt they would be folded. They should be promoted to AA.

(10-24-2019 08:57 PM)TerryD Wrote:  I guess that I picked a bad time to become a fan of the Bristol Pirates and Greensboro Grasshoppers. :(

Terry, the Grasshoppers have a great facility and solid attendance (consistent top 5 of Class A). I don't think you will have to worry about them.


https://www.milb.com/greensboro/ballpark/stadium