www.baseballamerica.com
Yup. I can't speak for around the country, but I know around here they generally do pretty well for themselves. Great deals and really mix well with the surrounding area
The loss of the St. Paul Saints to AAA fucks the indy team (and likely league) up here over.
For the casual fan of the team, they probably won't notice much of a difference. But people that follow the team more, it definitely loses a spark for AAA teams compared to Indy. The AAA team becomes more about the MLB team's needs. Its the right move for the Twins to have a team closer.
I mean, I'll still go to games when I'm in the Twin Cities and the quality of play will obviously be better. There's just a more fun "casual" aspect to the Indy games. Players/Managers shooting the shit with fans during the games, the routine plays becoming errors is fun.
In general there's a lot of concerning drawbacks to the new structuring going on. And MLB is essentially strong arming the minor league teams. The minor league owners are pretty pissed but there isn't much they can do. Essentially they are being forced to sign agreements that say they can't sue or make complaints about their partnership with MLB. And this is before they even sign their actual partnership agreements.
Yea, granted I'm not a baseball super fan, but this whole offseason with the minors seems really weird to me. It's like intentionally rocking the boat for seemingly little benefit.
www.mlb.com
The Yankees fucked over two old affiliates this off-season. Their short-season A affiliate (league is now completely gone) left Staten Island and went to Hudson Valley (used to be a Tampa affiliate, but the owner of the Hudson Valley franchise is also a minority owner of the Yankees). Staten Island totally folded. Their AA team left Trenton for a previously independent league franchise in Bridgewater, NJ. Trenton will now be part of the short season "draft league" that's basically guys hoping to get a second look after the draft.
Yeah, Staten Island was pretty pissed that the Yankees didn't want to continue that partnership. They have a really nice stadium with great views of lower Manhattan, and there's a 9/11 memorial right outside the stadium. Locals have been trying to redevelop that part of the Island for a while, and having the affiliate team there was helping the local restaurants (pre-covid, anyway)
MLB got rid of two levels of the minor leagues (rookie ball and short season A ball), and decided to basically take the minors completely over.Yea, granted I'm not a baseball super fan, but this whole offseason with the minors seems really weird to me. It's like intentionally rocking the boat for seemingly little benefit.
The weird thing about the AA league (the Saints former league), was that about a month before the Saints moving to AAA thing, they put out a press release in joint with the MLB about how there was some sort of "agreement" and how it would be GREAT for the AA league, having this "relationship" with MLB.
American Association, Frontier League designated as partner leagues of MLB
Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today that it has named both the American Association and the Frontier League as “Partner Leagues” of MLB. The American Association and the Frontier League join the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball (ALPB), which was designated a Partner League...
...only to rip the absolute heart of the league (the Saints draw literally twice as much on average than the next most attended team) out and shit on it's grave.
#truth
