Baseball has another issue as minor league owners are fighting to salvage what is an intrical part of the game. The condensed system of minor league clubs and affiliation with Major League Baseball has always been the feeder system.

Minor League Baseball has always been the foundation. The players, scouts, fans, and municipalities are all a part of this and a sad part is a loss of jobs that include concession workers, security, and others that work on game day.

But MLB has another plan as teams have condensed their affiliates to a few. The Mets this week announced their 2021 affiliates of Triple-A Syracuse, Double-A Binnghamton, and the High-A Brooklyn Cyclones as their Penn League short season and other teams have been eliminated.

Still, the Mets will have their Class A St. Lucie Mets in Florida. Regardless the impact will be seen when MLB resumes in 2021 which is expected to be delayed due to COVID.

And you could see the changes were coming. The truncated 2020 season saw teams function without their minor league affiliates. Players that would normally have been at the Triple-A level were sent to alternative sites and waited for their call.

The owners said the alternative sites were possible. They said it would work and for the most part it did. MCU Park in Brooklyn, home of the Cyclones and in proximity to City Field, made it work. Though, for 29 other clubs much of alternative sites did not work and many reasons have been cited. 

But the point here is the difficult reality about a slow death of Minor League Baseball. You wonder how much of the change will affect development of the prospects and draft picks and how much this change will impact the big clubs that have fed on their minor league affiliates.

“I’m glad they’re keeping Brooklyn,” said Tom Gamboa, a former manager of the Cyclones from 2014-2016. He saw the impact of a Low-A season and the progression of players as they go up the ladder.

Gamboa cites Amed Rosario and Michael Conforto. But the change was coming and he saw that first hand. 

“This condensation has been coming a few years now,” he said when contacted. “Everybody is trying to streamline costs and slim down  Seems to be with the advent of Division 1 collegiate baseball and they (owners) felt there was no need to spend money to have six or seven farm teams cut them to four.”

What occurs from here, and as owners of minor league clubs take their MLB counterparts to court, are a plan of six teams and 180 players that would comprise players from the annual draft of college players. 

There would be a new group of players in a Low-A, High-A, Double-A, and Triple-A level. All of this is in the planning stages and expected to be the new structure of minor league baseball.

Again, teams and franchises are the unfortunate losers of a situation that is beyond their control. 

And it hurts. The owners, as Gamboa saw as manager of the Dodgers’ Triple-A Albuquerque Dukes in 2000, run their teams strictly as a mom and pop store and stay away from the corporate aspect of business. 

College baseball is never going to be at the level like SEC football where you come and play right away in the NFL,” Gamboa said. “You need that major league transition to further develop. Every once in a while a Rosario or Conforto comes along and gets there at an accelerated pace.”

Though most players now are not going at each level of minor league ball and they have graduated to the MLB level because of their skills. Perhaps this has also been a decision as to why the condensation process is taking place.

So, and despite what they say, MLB owners are strictly looking at this as a cost effective move. They cite the economic losses of a billion dollar industry that was disrupted with a COVID short season of no fans and concession revenues.

But that is not what minor league baseball looks like. This also limits the opportunity of players that get bypassed in the draft as hundreds of scouts that are employed by teams have lost their jobs.

“There is no backbone to the game if minor league baseball is cut to this magnitude,” said another longtime NL scout who is barely hanging on to his job and uncertain where this goes.

Yes, the changes are coming and  those in minor league baseball say they will continue the fight to salvage what they have. In the end it’s about the economics and MLB taking the corporate route over the Mom and Pop minor league system.

A successful and good conduit for players as their progression to the big leagues will likely be decided by the corporate aspect of Major League Baseball.