2020 Minor League Season Officially Canceled
Late yesterday afternoon, the official word came down that MLB will not be supplying players to its affiliates this year, canceling the 2020 season.
Like the revelation of incompetence within the current administration, this is hardly a shock. The writing has been on the wall… the floor… the ceiling for months now.
Though they had to be publicly shamed into doing so, the Nationals will pay a pittance to the minor-leaguers through what would have been the end of the season. Nineteen teams will pay their players through Aug. 31 or later, but two—the Diamondbacks and the Angels—have not committed beyond yesterday. BA has the full breakdown
Roughly two weeks ago, I got word that there would be no AFL. At the time, it was thought there would only be some sort of program in the Florida spring training complexes. It’s probably safe to say that that won’t happen either.
So now what?
The current PBA expires in September. Last October, MLB announced it would contract the minors beginning in 2021. The “hit list” began with 42 teams and allegedly teams have been moved on and off that list ever since.
As I’ve stated in the comments, the pandemic will accelerate what was the endgame all along: to buy back teams from minor-league operators for pennies on the dollar.
Rob Manfred Lite, er, MiLB President Pat O’Conner admits as much while noting there is a bill in Congress for a “lifeline loan program” beyond some of the payroll protection and other bailout monies that are due to expire at the end of this month.
But even Stevie Wonder can see that the odds of that happening are nil. As they always do, the millionaires (MiLB) will have to get in line behind the billionaires (MLB) even if Congress passes another bailout.
Thus, the question becomes how soon do teams sell or fold? Advertisers and fans are going to come asking for refunds. Vouchers and make-goods might keep money from having to be paid out
now but that’s money that won’t come in later.
It’s already clear that teams owned (fully or partially) by MLB won’t be contracted. What’s not clear is which teams or locations they covet. And that’s still under the presumption that the plan is still for four full-season leagues and one short-season in the ST complexes. It could be fewer.
So the longest offseason ever will drag on and we’ll be left to ask: How many horrible years can we cram into one? (NSFW).
As expected. Bye bye baseball
Find another fan to fill my void ..
Without any revenue in 2020, many MiLB teams will have to face the possibility of bankruptcy. That should complicate the contraction effort. All MiLB players (except those placed on the 60-man rosters) will lose a full year of learning and development. Some undoubtedly will leave the sport to find other ways to make a living.
It won’t complicate the contraction effort, it will facilitate it. Whatever teams manage to come out of this with their heads above water will remain, the others contracted.
MLB made it clear from the start they didn’t care which teams were contracted, just so long as some were. If they did, they would have made objective criteria about facilities/attendance/etc. available for teams to aspire to. They didn’t. They just drafted a pretty haphazard list that made little sense (like why include the Frederick Keys, who had some of the highest attendance numbers in A ball and relatively modern facilities?).
Perhaps too many will declare bankruptcy, but given the average MLB team is valued at $1.85bil, I’m sure owners will jump at the chance to acquire these assets for fractions of their value, and won’t have trouble financing such moves, given that there’s been a discernible shift to do so pre-COVID, as Luke has pointed out above.
Hate contraction. Minor league baseball is a great way to grow the game. Because the return on the investment is not immediate, MLB looked to reduce its annual expenses by reducing the number of minor leaguers in its system. At least 40 cities and towns that used to offer professional baseball as summer entertainment won’t have that option. Obvious that is not in the long-term interest of baseball, but MLB does not care. The savings per team because of this move is nominal given each teams revenues (MLB teams would save less than $1 million a year if they reduce the number of players in their system by 40).
Even so, with 100 MILB franchises instead of 140, there won’t be a shortage of ownership groups willing to invest in minor league baseball, despite the pandemic and the lack of 2020 revenue. There will be substantially smaller pool of available slots (teams to own), and there are plenty of people with money that want to be linked to the game in one way or another. Generally, people don’t expect to get rich off owning a minor league team; they do it for the cache and because involvement in the game on any level makes them happy. That’s not changing.
Yep. I became a baseball fan through MILB. The Orioles were too far away and too expensive, so I was raised on Baysox and Keys games. I imagine hundreds of thousands of other kids like myself had the same experience.
Now, a third of these kids will lose that opportunity, and will stick to entertainment sources that are much more accessible to them, like e-sports, and baseball will bleed new generations of fans.
It’s a ridiculously shortsighted strategy by MLB owners to maximize profits in the short term, which obliterating long term earnings. But who on earth could ever have predicted radical capitalists would make disastrous long-term decisions in favor of short term gains?!?!