MLB to Small Town America: Drop Dead

The owners of the Emeralds will have to buy out the current leaseholder if they hope to move the team there. Not the city. And the stadium is owned by the city of Keizer, not the city of Salem.

 

The article reads a lot more like “Major league clubs will require their affiliates to provide housing” than any benevolence from the parent club.

 

Next item to be added to the standard list of stadium demands mandated for minor league franchises by MLB will be a 15-unit apartment building either built into the stadium or within 5 minutes walking distance.
Now what you do with those apartments during the 7 months a year the minor league team isn't there, who knows?

 

AirMLB 'em!

 

I'm always somewhat amazed that any players make it to the majors, given how shitty they're treated in the minors. I suppose the high draft picks can just burn through their bonus money, but still.

 

Funniest thing you've ever posted, today.

 

I read a suggestion that teams purchase a hotel near the stadium where they can house players during the season and rent rooms in the off season.

 

That doesn’t necessarily work because some of these teams are in vacation hotspots, where room demand goes up and not down during the summer. Think they’re gonna want to take 20 rooms out of circulation in July?

 

One of the Dirk Hayhurst books had a pretty good description of his living conditions in Portland when he was in the Padres organization, three guys living hand-to-mouth in a tiny apartment with hardly any furniture. And that was 10-15 years before the PDX real estate market went bonkers and rent skyrocketed.

 

It wouldn't be taking them completely out of circulation, they'd be getting paid some kind of stipend from some source (probably themselves, indirectly).
It's all bookkeeping and balance sheets and writing shit off as business expense.


More and more MLB is going to want to identify that percentage of minor league players who actually have potential to make the majors, pour all their development resources into them, and everybody else can go play independent / semipro /sandlot baseball and pay their own freight.

My guess is that in about 10 years, each MLB team will have its active roster (30 players), a reserve / taxi / JV squad (25 players) and then probably two minor league teams (50 players).

Everybody else will just go play baseball somewhere.