The Minor League Baseball officially canceled its season this week. The fact that it was a move we all knew was coming made it no less painful.
And the fact that we already knew massive financial challenges would come doesn’t make the situation any less dire. In fact, it is much, much worse than I thought.
“Trouble.”
“A Band-Aid in a Bleeding Industry”.
“There are a lot of equipment that is neither liquid nor solvent.”
Yesterday was a bleak day for the Minor Baseball League.
But there is a sense of hope when the league turns to Congress for help: https://t.co/26W67glNhq
– Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) July 1, 2020
In short, without any season, more than half of all MiLB teams, in the words of MiLB President Pat O’Conner, are poised to be insolvent. That means, unless there is government help, the teams would have to sell if possible (most likely to MLB or their teams), or go bankrupt. Many would simply disappear.
Due to the importance of minor league baseball to communities across the country, it is possible that government loans may help bridge this massive gap (over 17 months with no income for many teams). We already know that even if that happens, the volume of minor league teams will drop dramatically in the upcoming MLB / MiLB deal. And that reduction, by itself, is not going to change things for MiLB right now. Things are so bad.
Scary things about BA and O’Conner:
Once the dust settles in that arena, the two sides are likely to meet again to discuss the details of what the minor leagues will look like in 2021. As part of the MLB plan, each of the 30 major league clubs He would have four full-season minor league teams and at least one more at his home complex in Florida or Arizona.
That only presented a considerable threat to the future of the league. The coronavirus has greatly increased the stakes.
“This coronavirus threat transcends any list anyone wants to make regarding the possibility that teams will not be present in the future,” O’Conner said. “Deep in the 120s, what are traditionally very strong clubs are in dire straits.”
That is not only true for 2020 and 2021, but also for an even deeper future. O’Conner repeatedly referred to the financial situation MiLB faced in 2008 and 2009, when the economic downturn put financial pressure on many teams.
“I was able to see this lingering (economic impact) in 2022, 2023 easily,” O’Conner said. “In some cases, possibly a little more.”
It is not difficult at all to imagine, now, that the originally expected composition of the 120 surviving teams will change due to the pandemic, *and* The structure / ownership / operations of the 120 surviving teams will likely be very different. As much as we want all minor league teams to be prosperous and independent businesses (because, in the long run, that’s what’s good for the sport and those communities), many may have been so affected by the loss of income. next year, that a full system overhaul is the only way this works.
Even that review is still being resolved, because many teams don’t know if they will survive as affiliate clubs next year, meaning they cannot get loans to continue operations during the off season (BA). So it becomes a terrible chicken and egg proposition: which teams survive the affiliate cut is related to which teams can survive the pandemic is related to which teams survive the affiliate cut is related to which teams can survive the the pandemic … and so on. As I’m sitting here, I don’t even know how to solve that challenge * without * a ton of low-priced equipment purchased by MLB and / or its clubs, and * without * a ton of bankrupt equipment. I hope there is a way forward, but I am really very concerned about what that is.
None of those things go into the biggest questions about what the entire MiLB structure will look like in the future: are the leagues totally different? Are the levels totally different? Is MLB taking over MiLB operations? – but I can’t think until I have more clarity on how many teams are going to survive. This is a disaster that is difficult for me to clearly expose the existential threats facing professional baseball in the United States, particularly below the MLB level.
It’s still more likely that some more recognizable version of the Minor Leagues will roll out next year and beyond. But it is crazy to think that, as of this writing, that is not a guarantee. Furthermore, even in the most realistic case where MLB continues its plan to reduce affiliates to 120 (four per MLB organization), the pandemic will have created so much turmoil that the fundamentals of minor league baseball are going to change. in some previously unthinkable ways.
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