You, like me, may have heard about an MLB attack on (or change to, depending on one’s point of view) minor league baseball this offseason and not taken the time, at the time, to figure out what happened. If that’s the case for you, as it was for me, here are the changes (by my understanding):
- The overall number of affiliated minor league baseball teams (affiliated meaning part of the farm system of an MLB franchise) was cut from 160 to 120. This was done by eliminating Short-Season A ball and two Rookie Leagues.
- Teams shuffled around in filling those 120 spots, with some affiliations staying put and a lot changing. In the process, three formerly independent teams were brought into the 120, leaving the number of formerly affiliated teams looking for a new home at 43.
- Three formerly independent leagues—the American Association, the Atlantic League, and the Frontier League—are now “partner leagues,” which basically seems to mean that they’re still unaffiliated with teams but there are now more direct ties with Major League Baseball. The Pioneer League, formerly Rookie ball, is also a partner league now. There are still other independent leagues that are not formally associated with Major League Baseball.
- The Appalachian League, formerly Rookie ball, is now a college summer league. It’s still evidently affiliated with Major League Baseball, though.
- There is now an MLB Draft League that’s run by MLB and is specifically for players expected to be drafted. The draft has been moved from June to the All-Star Break and will now be only twenty rounds (as fewer players are needed with fewer affiliated teams).
- The Arizona and Gulf Coast Leagues still exist, as do the Dominican Summer League and the Arizona Fall League. I am uncertain of whether the Arizona and Gulf Coast Leagues are seeing their roles change with respect to their organizations, but my impression is that the DSL and AFL are staying pretty much the same. None of these were counted in the 160 teams or the 120 teams, for complicated reasons I am not the best person to explain.
- The New York-Penn League and the Northwest League, former Short-Season A ball entities, are no more.
- The affiliated leagues themselves have been restructured. It’s unclear if they will take on old names, new names, or have names at all (they’re currently being referred to by names like “Low-A Southeast,” which really captures the romanticism MLB leadership seems to feel for baseball these days).
- The 43 teams with whom ties were cut have, for the most part, found new homes. Kelsie Heneghan was keeping a thread of most if not all of these changes on Twitter, and I believe that thread’s still active. As of her last update, it sounds like seven teams were still looking for homes, per Sam Dykstra.
- The changes generally place minor league teams closer to their major league clubs. They also increase minimum salaries in affiliated leagues (while decreasing the total number of players) and reduce travel within the minor leagues.
If you know more about this or I’ve messed something up, please share in the comments, and I’ll correct as necessary. As I said, I’m months late on this, so I’m scraping things together from a lot of places and they or I could well have gotten a piece wrong. Overall, my impression is that this is not as bad as it’s often made out to be, but it does stink for a lot of individual minor league teams. I’m relieved to see minor league minimum salaries rising, but sad about the narrower gate to the minors for players, and I don’t know enough to know how to weigh those things against one another. For the third or fourth time, though, I don’t know enough to have the most worthwhile opinion on this.
