MLB to Small Town America: Drop Dead

There was a comment from an owner quite a few years ago: "I have to spend millions to fund minor league teams so the two guys who might actually make it have somebody to play catch with." I mentioned this to a friend who is a minor league instructor. He just shook his head and said the owner was probably right.

 

Yeah yeah, cry me a river, billionaire.


To follow this logic to its ultimate extension, let's get rid of 99.998 percent of all youth and high school baseball, since that percentage of players are never going to make the majors.

Look at it this way: of the players who make a regular season roster in MLB, probably 75 percent are absolutely incandescent stars at age 10 -- they dominate their leagues like Superman.

By the new Sabereugenics player development philosophy, we should tell all those kids to quit playing baseball -- quit wasting their time dicking around with the great unwashed who are never going to make it -- and just spend the next 10 years on swing angle, video analysis of mechanics, microtargeted nutrition and weight training, etc etc.

So then when they're 20-21, we'll have an incredible crop of ultimately fine-tuned hitting and throwing automatons.

Now yes yes we all know stories about the plucky underdogs, the sleepers, the late bloomers, the guys who platooned in HS, then grew six inches and 75 pounds and exploded at juco, the guys who were 37th round draft picks, hit .214 their first year in rookie ball,
blah blah etc etc.

But how do you ever find those guys if there's no place for them to play baseball?

 

It feels just like MLB to spend all this money on the upcoming lawsuits just to save the equivalent of 15 cents.

 

They want to cut payrolls, get rid of all the minor league players unlikely to ever make the majors, and they also want to fuck taxpayers in minor league cities out of building them Taj Mahal training facilities.

 

A question. Is this just MLB trying to leverage local owners to pick up more of the tab for salaries? In theory - nobody is forcing any MLB team to have any minor league affiliate, any of them could just go with one Single A team - or do a co-op with another MLB team.

 

But are small town fans interested because they see minor leaguers play, or because they can watch major leaguers seven days a week on TV? Our metro area of 300,000 hasn't had a team for several years, and it hasn't really affected our fandom. We have an MLB team two hours away, which is close enough to get to a few games a year, and we usually plan our vacation so we can see a game in a new city. If I want to take our son to a game where he can see players close up, we can always go to high school or college games. As a taxpayer, I'm glad city offiicals haven't listened to the individuals who want the city to renovate our stadium as a condition for their putting a team in it.

I also wonder whether a reduction in the number of minor league teams might lead to an increase in independent leagues and real local teams with more connection to their towns.

 

If the antitrust exemption of MLB was attacked from the right direction, conceivably major league teams could be ordered to give up control of minor league franchises, which would make them all independent operations -- free to try to win.

 

Hmmmm. Promotion/relegation?

 

Probably not. Promoted or relegated by whose decision?

The alternative would be, that once again winning would matter in minor league play. Teams would acquire or release players with the objective of winning games.

Oh by the way, the adoption of the academy model of talent development the Astros are championing, is straight out of Euro soccer (ie promotion and relegation).

 

The same idiots who've been using public money to pay for stadiums for the past XX years?

 

BTW, how do the Astros still qualify as a "small market" team? There's over 7 million people living in the Houston "metro" area.

 

Well, previously when teams were demanding tax-paid stadiums, there was an operating assumption the team would continue to exist.
If MLB essentially eliminates 1/3 of the roster of minor league teams in one fell swoop, this assumption goes out the window.