https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/2787...n-40-teams

Lots of baseball fans here so I thought this would be of interest. Among the proposals they're considering is getting rid of about 40 of the existing 160 minor league teams, and vastly shuffling existing teams to make them more geographically friendly.

According to the reports, the 40 teams at the lower levels that are not included in this venture would be reclassified into a "Dream League," which would be run jointly by MLB and Minor League Baseball and would include players who were not selected in the draft, which under this proposal would be moved from June to August and reduced to 20 to 25 rounds. I guess that latter part sounds a bit like the G League for the NBA?

Changes are probably going to be put in place after the 2020 season.

ETA - just thinking about it, an August draft would suck for college baseball programs. You wouldn't know about your roster until it was too late to make adjustments in some cases.

I really, really don't like this proposal.

I think there is to much overlap in the low minors. Do you really need SS, A, and Hi A? The Dream League looks like an assault on the Indy leagues. There is a need to resurrect the American Association just to cut down travel in Triple A.

(10-18-2019 07:58 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  I think there is to much overlap in the low minors. Do you really need SS, A, and Hi A? The Dream League looks like an assault on the Indy leagues. There is a need to resurrect the American Association just to cut down travel in Triple A.

Agree 100% on the resurrection of the American Association. Take the western 4 from the International League and the eastern 8 from the PCL. Minor league all-star game could be NL versus AL prospects.

I think the Hi-A, A, SS, and Rookie designations are trying to dress it up better than it is. I still think of A, B, C, D.

If every team has a AAA, AA, A, B, C, and D (I'm using the old designations because they make more sense to me), that's 180 minor league clubs. I think that can be justified.

Agree on the return to the old designations but think the current labeling is more about perception. You can build new ballparks for even the Rookie league
But the B, C, D tag would make it more difficult.

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/...gue-teams/

The Baseball America story (and they were the ones who broke the story) has more details. Plus some corrections on the earlier ESPN story (like the draft probably won't be in August, but it would be after the CWS is over).

One neat thing that could happen is Sugar Land's team might become part of the minors, instead of the Independent League.