MLB to Small Town America: Drop Dead

I'm talking about the little things that mean a lot.
Throwing a party at the ballpark for the kid who just beat cancer.
All the goofball promotions, some of the most creative stuff you'll ever see in sports promotion.

 

Roger Kahn wrote a book about the year he owned the Utica team in the NY-Penn League in the 1980s, which was the only independent team in the minors at that time. They signed some older players, and, since they weren’t looking at development, played to win. Some execs were upset at them for doing so. They ended up winning the league that year.

 

Don’t you need short season-A for the guys who get drafted, since they’re turning pro in June and won’t be at spring training?

Seems like itd be pretty awkward for all of the new guys to kind of show up and take over 1/2 of a full A team after 3 months

 

They also use short season for high school guys drafted the previous year
They stay in extended spring training until the season starts

 

The plan is that they will move the draft to August, they’ll cut the number of rounds to 20, and the drafted players will just do an extended fall training at the complex until spring training.

 

So at the larval stage of player development, they will cut their number of prospects (remind me, what round was Mike Piazza drafted in?) and go almost a full year without any of what the minors most provide, training in the experience of being a professional ballplayer on a professional team. Fantastic.

 

Slight fix to your list.

 

The border between the Phillies and Orioles markets goes right through my home town, Wilmington, Del. South of town it's Orioles. In town and north, Phillies. I'd make Trenton the cutoff point for Philly/New York. That still leaves a lot of people in the market. And anyway, the size of the market is secondary to how much you can squeeze out of it in $. Many more people in the Mets market, but the Red Sox are way more profitable. Monopolies always are. Being number two in a big market is worse than having a medium one, like say St. Louis, to oneself.

 

I wonder if eliminating the lower levels of the minor leagues will finally make college baseball more than a regional sport? Seems like with fewer drafted players it might lead to some extra talent taking the college option and beefing up those rosters.

 

College baseball begins in the North at the end of March, usually in ankle deep snow. It ends the first week of May, usually about the time of the last sleet storms. In between your April games are usually played in 34 degree drizzle.

Then the college fields lie mostly vacant through May, June, July, August and September.

 

If pro teams can develop prospects without ever putting them on a field, then surely college teams can do the same.

I was thinking more along the lines of some of those low-round high school kids who might have taken their shot in the minors, instead having no place to go and looking for a place to keep playing. It might not be enough to make a difference, maybe only 100 kids or so each year, but they can't all go south or west for college. Some of them would wind up at northern schools, and if you get a few good classes it can start to change the culture.

 

This is an independent league that has been in metro Detroit for a few years. All games are played at one field. This might be the model for the independent leagues MLB is planning

United Shore Professional Baseball League