Minor League Baseball restructured

[pioneer98]

I saw a thread about the Cardinals leaving their minor league teams pretty much in place (except for the Rookie level of course).

This article has a breakdown of all the teams and their affiliates now.

I used to follow the Midwest League really closely for years, which was low-A. The good news is that most of the teams from that league survived the cut, and they are moving it up to high-A. My local team will be affiliated with the Royals. I will have to update my location to High A minors. I was pretty sure we would make the cut, but we were on the contraction list that came out about a year ago.

The bad news is Burlington, IA and Clinton, IA lost their teams. It's really disappointing. Clinton was a founding member of the Midwest League in 1954! I'm sure they will end up with some kind of team, like maybe the Northwoods League or Frontier League. I really hope they let them keep their team names and logos. So, a pretty sad day. It's a joke that Beloit made the cut but Clinton did not. Clinton's stadium was built in 1937 and they have done a lot to renovate it in the past 10 years. I love that old stadium. I will take that old one every single time over some new sterile thing that only seats 3,600 people.

[Jocephus]

[CardsofSTL]

Yeah you'd hate to have too many baseball games to watch.

[pioneer98]

Also worth noting that Clinton and Burlington were the only 2 teams in the MWL retracted, and are the only two teams in the league owned by nonprofits. Clinton is/was a private nonprofit with a few dozen shareholders who were mainly just random well-off people in the community. I believe the Burlington nonprofit was city-owned, and I think the mayor would appoint people to run it. Could be wrong. They both were definitely owned by nonprofits though.

So another message here is that it's mandatory that all teams are owned by a single rich a-hole, or maybe one rich a-hole with a few minority stakeholders.

In MLB's defense, it's really hard to get dozens of city residents, or the actual city government itself to threaten themselves to relocate the team unless they build a new stadium for themselves. Just doesn't work.

[Jocephus]

im definitely bummed grand junction got axed from the rockies. i was looking forward to watching some games.

[pioneer98]

A few years back, some rich out of town guy approached the shareholders of the Clinton nonprofit and tried buying them out so he could relocate the team, but they all said nope. They are talking about getting a Northwoods team or something similar. I'll still go to games there if they do because I like that ballpark so much and they deserve my business and deserve to have a team.

[pioneer98]

The two teams I was lamenting earlier in this thread (Clinton and Burlington) announced today they are joining the Prospects League, a wood-bat college all-star type of league. Better than nothing. Looks like they get to keep their team names and logos.

[Famous Mortimer]

Good. Every decision like this from MLB, with only profit in mind, makes me want to be a fan of the MLB product less and less. I'm just bummed that the River City Rascals closed up last year.

[Jocephus]

The two teams I was lamenting earlier in this thread (Clinton and Burlington) announced today they are joining the Prospects League, a wood-bat college all-star type of league. Better than nothing. Looks like they get to keep their team names and logos.

yeah pretty sure the grand junction rockies got put into one of these prospect/experimental leagues