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What If There’s No MiLB in 2020?

It’s been broached in the comments, but ignored in every “bubble league” proposal I’ve seen. Will there be minor-league baseball in 2020?

Ths good news is that I think the answer is maybe. The bad news is that I think if it happens, it will be just like spring training: on the backfields, with no boxscores.

Even then, it’s fairly obvious it will be strictly for keeping the 40-man guys in game shape. It’s hard to envision any games lower than the AAA or AA level.

Or as Frank told Ed in the first Naked Gun…

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One thing I have resisted is the idea of doing “This Day in” posts, but I’m also not sure if weekly posts are going to be enough. So I’ll ask rather than impose: Is there any interest in digging into the daily recaps from the past 10 years on a semi-daily basis? Perhaps pick one or two games to highlight and rewrite? Something to think about as we could be looking at a summer without minor-league baseball.

Feel free to discuss in the comments.

7 Commments

  1. Luke. Well said this morning. Always quote Leslie Nielsen but always that line from women’s baseball movie : there is no crying in baseball.
    It’s truly time to cultivate ones own life garden in other ways.
    MLBINC is showing it’s Inner colors
    94 was an owners shut down
    81 was a different animal.
    This snuffing our of MiiLB ( whatever alphabet soup applies here),seems so Mafia oh so so…
    Baseball clubs , casinos , gin joints … assets.. in history there is no difference …just quote Mario Puzo s Correlone speak ..

  2. While I do expect MLB to get back to some sort of action later on this year (guessing late June or early July), realistically, I think 20-40 affiliated minor league teams played their last game in September and didn’t know it. The Appalachian League is good as gone; the Northwest and California leagues will be very tempting to consolidate into a Western League for 2021; a lot of the New York-Penn League teams will likely go the way of their PONY League brethren (minor league baseball in Ontario and upstate New York took a beating in the postwar era); some of the last vestiges of the Three-I League that survived into the Midwest League will likely be swept away.

    For the record, my prediction for the Nats farm: DSL, GCL, Class-A Fredericksburg, Class-AA Harrisburg, Class-AAA ______ (Richmond?). Auburn and Hagerstown are toast.

    1. SM’s prediction for Nats’ MILB franchises, probably in 2021, sounds about right. Three full-season leagues (AAA,AA and A), and then a half-season Dominican team and team at the Nats’ training site WPB. Essentially, the MILB contraction plan will happen sooner than it otherwise would have. There was reasonably strong political support to keep contracting from happening, but now there are far more significant issues than keeping the Auburn Doubledays alive.

      Also, agree that there won’t be an MILB season at all in 2020. The driver for an MLB season is to recoup as much as possible TV money. No such incentive for minor-league teams.

    2. Like that Cal League blend with NW league idea.
      Interesting chess moves with leaving Fresno and cross country to Richmond .what brand name would the Nats go with ? Nats ?

      1. No clue. Jes’ guessin’ with all of this, but especially Triple-A. Only thing I’m really confident about is it’s not gonna be Fresno, and we’re lucky in a perverse sense to only have been stuck dealing with that unhappy arrangement for one season (and winning the World Series at the end of it all was a pretty decent consolation prize).

        The California League teams are all clustered pretty closely when you look at attendance, generally in the 2,000-3,000 range, but when you look at the Northwest League, there are four obvious outliers. Despite having playoff teams last year, Salem-Keizer and Tri-City didn’t really draw, each drawing about 800 people fewer than sixth-ranked Everett, and under 90,000 for the season. Meanwhile, Spokane drew literally 1,700 more per game than third-ranked Hillsboro (the league champion last year), and Vancouver drew 1,000 more per game than Spokane.

        Vancouver should, by rights, be a Triple-A city, but Spokane is actually a little smaller than Boise, which is in the middle of the pack, and while Hillsboro is half Spokane’s size, it’s not far from Portland, the largest U.S. city outside of Texas that doesn’t have its own professional baseball team. So Spokane is hard to figure. But Vancouver really belongs in a higher league. So you could combine what’s left of the Northwest League with the California League for a 15-team league, or you could lop off the teams MLB has targeted for contraction (Lancaster, Salem-Keizer, Tri-City) for a 12-team league, or you could separate out Spokane and keep those three and have a 14-team league.

        1. Then look @ Tacoma being in the back pocket of Seattle ..sins of us can recall flying into Seattle when the board heading read Seattle – Tacoma …

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