(11-22-2019 02:39 PM)dbackjon Wrote:  

(11-22-2019 01:39 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Ugh - I hate defending the blood-sucking MLB owners, but after hearing quite a bit of commentary from people that really know minor league baseball and the evaluation of prospects well, the overall plan makes sense in the long-term. Ultimately, MLB teams are currently drafting players that they *know* have no chance of making the majors simply to fill out minor league rosters. That doesn’t make sense for MLB since they’re using resources on players that they know upfront won’t develop and, in turn, those players would have otherwise been Division I talent that could have received scholarships and get their college educations paid for instead as opposed to chasing a false dream. To be sure, the minor league teams losing their affiliations are the losers in this plan, but that’s a risk that they take when they’re not the ones paying for the player and coaching personnel.

Also, the complaints about this hurting local small town fans probably doesn’t look good from a PR standpoint, but the reality is that the majority of the franchises at risk have attendance lower than 1500 per game and, in many cases, less than 1000 per game. It’s akin to when a college starts talking about dropping a sport (or multiple sports) due to attendance and financial issues, but then all of the sudden people start coming out of the woodwork to suddenly talk about how important those sports are to that school. The image of all of these small towns across America enjoying minor league baseball night in and night out exists as an *idea* in our heads (largely rooted in nostalgia), but it’s not really based on today’s reality.

The main issue with the plan is that attempting to do all of this in 2 years is asinine. They’re talking about structural changes that should honestly need to take a decade to implement. It also shows how MLB has the PR skills of the love child of Sean Spicer and Roseanne Barr. News flash: affiliations change and franchises get extinguished in minor league baseball every single year and no one says a peep. MLB could have “naturally” implemented this plan over the course of 10 years and we probably wouldn’t have noticed at all. Instead, they’re trying to cram everything into a 2-year period, which now makes them look like the money-grubbing owners that are out to kill the defenseless Pioneer League and other small town teams.

In essence, the MLB plan actually makes sense, but the proposed timeframe is totally unrealistic.

I get the business aspect, and trying to shift more to college, but you still have communities that have made real investments in ballparks.

The Pioneer League, which looks like is being eliminated, is averaging 2500 - with lows in Orem of 1300, and two that are just shy of 4000

This proposal will empty large sections of the country from having any MLB affiliate baseball, and there is only so many independent leagues that can survive.