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Originally Posted by Swaggs
Has anyone come across any good articles or explanations about what is going on with minor league baseball?
I get that no fans equals no season for minor leagues and have seen stuff about having larger MLB rosters with taxi squads (seems kind of fun/interesting for a year), but the ESPN article about cutting hundreds of jobs is real vague. Are we going to see a complete realignment in how baseball organizations work or is this more like a furlough/lay-off type situation where rights are still retained?
I’m hoping this isn’t owners backdooring their way out of continuing to fund and associate with minor league baseball, but it sure seems like the opportunity is there for them to protect and develop their top X number of players as assets and leave every other marginal prospect and vet to be free agent-types playing in in independent leagues (“dream leagues”).
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A large portion of these cuts were guys that would have been cut after spring training. A 40 round draft brings in nearly 1300 players per year without getting into undrafted free agents. The timing of it raises concerns but most of these guys were probably getting cut anyway. How deep the rumored next round of cuts go will be one to watch.
The cuts to the draft and the upcoming cut of 1/4 of minor league teams is of much bigger concern and is a terrible decision by MLB. The advantage MLB has over the NBA and NFL is a deep minor league system makes professional baseball an attainable goal for a large number of high school and college players. That drives interest and youth participation in baseball has been up the past several years. Take away teams and push that goal further out of reach and I do think you start to see the impact trickle down.
That's without even getting into the community impact in places like Bluefield, which I'm sure you know how important having a team is to a town like that.