Atlanta Braves and MLB will likely have a difficult minor league season
As we’ve hinted before, the minor leagues might be hit hardest this Summer. It’s not looking good.
The whole idea of having minor league is for the development of players capable of taking their game to the next level – the majors. While there are continued rumors about the loss of multiple Atlanta Braves minor league clubs, it’s this entire sub-sport at risk for 2020.
In a discussion with BaseballAmerica’s J.J. Cooper on the SiriusXM MLB Channel’s Minors and Majors show from Sunday (no link available), host Grant Paulsen asked about how a minor league season could be played this year.
Several points were noted:
- MiLB All-Star games have been canceled (links here and here for starters) … or will be soon for those not yet announcing it.
- The Cape Code league for 2020 has been canceled.
- While the major league clubs have TV contracts in place and thus have reasons to press forward, most minor league teams do not. Thus…
- (a) the idea of playing in empty stadiums is a money-losing proposition in all respects
- (b) team with TV or radio deals are dependent on local businesses for sponsorships – and they are exactly the group hurting the most right now
- (c) Those without either have to depend on attendance and merchandising to survive in the best of times – and these days clearly are not the best of times.
- While major league clubs could get away with some sort of travel-less “hub” solution to play their games, the minor league clubs cannot.
- For one reason, the MLB clubs will likely be using the best facilities available.
- For another, who would volunteer to operate stadiums without any revenue?
- The minor league clubs can’t travel as they normally would either, for one state might be ‘open’ and yet a neighboring state with a league’s team might not. That would kill a schedule.
So while there is still some glimmer of hope that perhaps a 60-, 70-, 80-games minor league season could be cobbled together, the points they raised all conspire together to make that hope look bleak.
It also appears that while there is some framework agreement now happening between MLB and MiLB to reduce the team count below the majors to 120, there is no definitive list of teams being cut at this time.
We had heard that the Atlanta Braves might lose two: High-A Florida and Rookie League Danville. That’s still possible, but nothing is final.
One thing that was discussed on the Sunday program was the chance that some of the displaced cities might be forming a new league expressly for the undrafted and released players – effectively a new Independent semi-pro league – for the purposes of having a place where such players can go to get noticed.
It would not be as good as what the as-yet-unnamed-cities have today, but it would be baseball in some form.
Regardless: it’s truly almost all bad news for the lower levels of the sport. If the minor league season is indeed banged for the year, it would be that much more difficult to get things restarted in 2021 with operators potentially put out of business all together between now and then.
An infusion of cash would be needed to save these, and in a true partnership arrangement, MLB might be expected to step in and help … but not now and not this year. It’s simply a bad season for everybody right now.