| The Detroit News
For those who follow big-league baseball — for those, say from the Tigers’ cosmos — this is not the kind of news that stacks up with hiring AJ Hinch as manager.
But within baseball’s nursery, the minor leagues, there is drama bubbling. Or, perhaps, the more accurate word is anxiety.
Major League Baseball is pretty much preparing to take over the minor leagues and cut direct-license deals with 120 teams heading into the Mystery Year of 2021.
Several storylines can be gleaned from what is known and what, more often, is being whispered.
► Note that those proposed 120 minor-league teams are 42 fewer teams than the 162 clubs that have been on the modern minor-league books. MLB isn’t disputing that 40-plus minor-league towns are about to lose their teams, or that many of those clubs will be absorbed into Independent League frameworks that will run outside MLB’s direct oversight.
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► What this means for the Tigers, for now, is that they’re saying goodbye to their old short-season Low-A affiliate at Norwich, Connecticut. The Connecticut Tigers — they last year were creatively renamed the Norwich Sea Unicorns — generally functioned as a June-July-August stopover for talented kids fresh from college or for personnel (often older) that had graduated from Gulf Coast League boot camp. The New York-Penn League is no more. Not as it previously existed. Thus, the Sea Unicorns are expected to be gone from Detroit’s baseball portfolio even before they played a single game in those snazzy Sea Unicorn togs.
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► The Tigers will be maintaining five teams: Triple-A, Double-A, High-A, Low-A, and a couple of joint squads that will continue — for now — in the Gulf Coast League hatchery at Lakeland, Florida.
The question that hasn’t yet been answered is where those above affiliates might be situated.
Glass City unbreakable
What is known is this: Toledo as the Tigers’ Triple-A attachment is secure. So is West Michigan, which has been the full-season Low-A affiliate and Midwest League staple even as the Midwest League prepares to drop at least two teams, likely in the Iowa towns of Clinton and Burlington.
Lakeland probably — be wary of that word until MLB unveils its reconfiguration — will remain the Tigers’ High-A outpost as part of the TigerTown complex and Joker Marchant Stadium/Publix Field sphere.
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There has been whispering almost to the point of loud chatter that Lakeland and West Michigan might be flip-flopping High- and Low-A status as part of MLB’s redesign. But those who should know say this would be news to them.
Any uncertainty as it relates to the Tigers’ lineup has rested on Double-A Erie.
When it was first disclosed last autumn that 42 farm teams were likely to be axed by 2021, the speculative list — reported by Baseball America and other entities — included Erie.
The Tigers would not then have objected. The field was bad. The lighting was inferior. The clubhouse was more of a closet than a professional baseball enclave. The ballpark and its attachments were not Double-A, or any-A for that matter.
So, the city and state bosses got busy taking care of a community and state resource: $12 million was scraped up for facelifts on clubhouses, weight-training areas, kitchen capacity — all the areas MLB was insisting upon if teams want to partner with it in 2021.
Relationships, for now, appear to be strong.
A word about that “partnership” between MLB and minor-league teams, which at the moment is the crux of a battle, as well as a mystery MLB hasn’t to date chosen to resolve.
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MLB and Minor League Baseball have had a 120-year, renewable Professional Baseball Agreement (PBA as it’s known) that solidifies alliances and business practices between 30 big-league teams and those previous 162 minor-league clubs.
That contract — most recently a 10-year deal — expired Sept. 30. There has been no evident progress on a new contract, not that Rob Manfred’s office appears overly concerned. Rather, there looks to be a de facto move toward MLB simply moving forward with its plan to neutralize, if not knock out, the middle man: Minor League Baseball.
That shift last month seemed more than overt. Peter Freund, who among various minor-league team interests owns the Cardinals Triple-A affiliate at Memphis, Tennessee, was appointed by Manfred to help transition Minor League Baseball’s headquarters from St. Petersburg, Florida, to — surprise — New York’s MLB offices.
What is known is that some kind of new contract, with a new framework, will be forged ahead of any minor-league play in 2021.
That is, if COVID-19 allows next year what it didn’t permit in 2020: a minor-league season schedule.
MLB is taking its time, distressingly so, if you happen to be in the business of minor-league ball. MLB wants to see how a pandemic and its steadily more perilous infection rates affect plans for baseball in 2021, and beyond
Just as much, MLB needs a bead on how many of even those pared-down 120 franchises will have the wherewithal to survive into next year. Farm teams were ravaged in 2020 minus dollars that normally keep teams afloat. Profit margins, if any, are notoriously thin in minor-league ball. This year, farm teams were among America’s most wounded small businesses.
Feeling the pinch
The potential for bankruptcies is real, baseball analysts say, especially if Congress doesn’t approve loans or lifelines that helped keep any number of farm-teams solvent during the past calamitous year.
As for any Tigers’ concerns about Erie, the town and team have indeed been trying. The Tigers appear to be soothed as they wait for Manfred’s office to give an all-clear Erie’s bosses fully expect.
Greg Coleman, the SeaWolves team president, said this in an email to the Detroit News:
“ … We’ve worked closely with the Tigers and MiLB officials to understand MLB’s proposed new requirements for its licensed affiliates. The renovations currently underway at UPMC Park meet the majority of those requirements.
“Additional standards will be met by clubhouse renovation, which is expected to start soon. We are confident that these recent and forthcoming renovations will ensure Erie continues as the Double-A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers.”
Coleman added:
“Many teams throughout MiLB will need to make significant upgrades to meet the new facility requirements. We’re fortunate, thanks to support from Governor Wolf, Erie Events, and our state and local representatives, that we have a head start compared to most teams in meeting the new standards.
“We’re also very fortunate to have a supportive partner in the Tigers. We have a strong, 20-year partnership, and we expect that relationship will continue for years to come.”
Coleman could, after MLB finally makes its plans known, be bang-on with his confidence.
But, again, there has been no indicator from the one place that counts: Manfred’s office. Meanwhile, too many teams have no idea if they’ll be part of a league or part of MLB’s 120-club cut. No one has seen a schedule for 2021. Season tickets, sponsorships, marketing avenues — everything is in flux.
Which isn’t the way any business would choose to operate.
For now, even more than Manfred’s office rules, a pandemic is governing baseball — business-wise, and competitively. The Commissioner is keeping MLB’s latest minor-league blueprint under lock and key no matter how much it unsettles towns and teams and a broad segment of sports commerce.
Coronavirus has taught an entire world, let alone baseball, that making future plans is done at one’s risk. But there’s a point where indecision no longer is a matter of playing it safe. Baseball can’t know the grandeur of the major leagues minus the help it gets from the minors. And those minor-league teams, those communities, those linchpins, should not be waiting until mid-November to know of their fate in 2021.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and former Detroit News sports reporter.