Offseason Update: Nov. 18, 2020
Given how slow the news is, we’re reduced to reading tea leaves about the future of minor-league baseball and which teams the Nats will affiliate with in 2021.
Perhaps the new thing that seems to be the most difficult to understand is that this is a brave new world and it’s no longer up to the individual organizations to pick/choose their affiliates. Gone is the bi-annual dance where a couple of dozen teams out of a hundred-plus would be eligible to change their affiliation and play Organization X against Organization Y.
As we’ve been discussing in the comments, this has led to a few organizations purchasing or investing in teams to avoid this exercise or to ensure that they don’t get assigned to an undesirable location (e.g. Washington with Fresno at AAA in 2019). It’s actually still happening.
Now, the final word is MLB’s. That doesn’t mean that the Nats or any other team don’t have any influence. As you saw in the previous link, the Astros purchased a stake in the Sugar Land Skeeters to ensure they’d be their AAA affiliate in 2021 (or whenever minor-league baseball resumes).
In the previous update, a couple of teams have gone so far as to announce their new affiliations, which MLB put the kibosh on because they still don’t have their shit together are reportedly still in negotiations with the various players.
Case in point: Last week the San Francisco Chronicle was reporting that Richmond was being taken away from San Francisco. This week, Ballpark Digest says they’re staying put.
So who’s right, who’s wrong? Could be both. Henry Schulman could be talking to someone in the front office of the Giants; Kevin Reichard could be talking to someone from the Flying Squirrels.
It’s worth noting/remembering that the Nationals have a terrible reputation among the minor-league operators. The Flying Squirrels could be leaking/campaigning to make it harder for MLB to assign Richmond to Washington, even if it’s already complicated by the presence of Harrisburg in the same league, and even if MLB has the PR skills of a middle-schooler.
Ultimately, the only purpose any of this is serving is to fill the vacuum, which is (and has always been) the purpose of rumor. For what it’s worth, the Friday after Thanksgiving is a popular day to release unpopular news. But I don’t have much faith that we’ll learn anything when we’re expecting it.
Dream scenario: Nats lineup goes Richmond, Harrisburg, Fredericksburg, Lynchburg.
Current Minor League Source projection: nats get Rochester, Harrisburg, Fredericksburg and West Virginia.
West Virginia plays near Morgantown, which is a heck of a lot closer to Pittsburgh and Cleveland than it is to DC. Lynchburg is currently Cleveland; if DC is projected to get WV i wonder if they’ll negotiate a swap. It’d make a ton more sense to have the low-A afilliate closer. It’d make the most sense for WV to be an afilliate of Pittsburgh (its like an hour and a half drive) but they’re slated to be in the florida state league in their spring training affiliate.
That’s interesting, because I figure the West Virginia Black Bears are probably toast. Their stadium is tiny (one of the smallest in the minor leagues), it’s shared with the university, and the location is awful both from the standpoint of affiliation and trying to squeeze it into a somewhat geographically cohesive league.
The Pirates are set aside from Triple-A, where both Indianapolis (their current affiliate) and Rochester (which is available) are perfectly cromulent options. They’ll have Erie at Double-A, Greensboro at High-A, and Bradenton at Low-A. Cleveland is less solid but can still project Triple-A Columbus, Double-A Akron, High-A Lake County, and probably Low-A Lynchburg.
Damned hard to figure out how Fredericksburg stays at High-A if Lynchburg and Salem are Low-A. That’s not a for-sure thing, but if that’s how it shakes out — and Cleveland *does* have a solid thing at High-A, with an affiliate just minutes from their home stadium that hosted their alternative training site this past season, while Boston owns the Salem Red Sox and looks likely to have its High-A affiliate in Lowell — Fredericksburg would be way to the north of the rest of the Carolina League, with no close or close-ish neighbors at all.
I thought Todd was referring to the other West Virginia team, West Virginia Power, who play in Charleston in the Sally League. They’re a logical re-affiliation candidate, because after a long affiliation with the Pirates, they switched to the Mariners in 2019, who will try to get into the California League. The Power’s stadium is newer (built in 2004) and larger than the Black Bears’ (4500).
Monongalia County Ballpark was built in 2015 — I made it a stop on my 2015 minor-league tour.
It’s small in terms of seating but MLB doesn’t care about that; it’s newer and more easily upgraded. Perhaps you’re confusing it with the old Hawley Field (built 1971)?
I do agree with Sao that it’s a better fit with Pittsburgh, but Greensboro seems destined to move to the Carolina League and Bradenton will replace the Black Bears.
If it works out that way, OK — I don’t see how it computes geographically, and I think one of the overriding goals with this reconfiguration is to reduce travel times, which drawing the South Atlantic League all the way up to the West Virginia/Pennsylvania state line decidedly does not do — but West Virginia, like Delaware, is one of those mid-Atlantic states near D.C. that should have a lot more Nats fans than it does, and maybe placing an affiliate there helps grow the fanbase.
Oh also Luke … give us the dirt. Why do the Nats have a terrible reputation among ML operators? Is it based on the quality of players we provide? Or is it things like the team skipping Harper over High-A to screw over that operator?
Yes, I had the same question. With Potomac specifically, I always heard that the issue was more with the “dangerous” (low-rent) nature of the Pfitz than it was directly with the Silber family, but I have no insider knowledge on that. They skipped Potomac for Stras, Harper, and Goodwin, but of course Rendon almost immediately got hurt there.
All of that, plus good old-fashioned arrogance. Harrisburg had been with the franchise since the 80s and I’ve heard very little consternation. Given the relationships with Bowie, Reading, and Altoona, and Akron it’d have taken something unusual for the respective parents to switch.
Todd, you might recall the big push that Kasten made to get into Syracuse and take advantage of some “taken for granted” feelings with Toronto. Prior to that it’s been when the music stops for New Orleans, Columbus, and Fresno.
Potomac was inherited. I can’t get into specifics, but let’s just say deals were made just prior to the sale of the Expos to the Lerners, back when MLB owned the team.
I’m not as familiar with the Savannah stuff as Sao might be but if I had to guess it’d be something to do with the Mets and/or the Wilpons, who will never be confused with either Mark Cuban or the Dallas Mavericks, iykwim. Like the AAA team, it’s been a “take my wife…please” with Hagerstown and the Nats.
One of the big contract issues is the Orioles hold over FRED and Aberdeen not to mention Delmarva .
The affiliates issue seems to be running top story above the traditional winter shipping rumors of clubs
Goodwin , Springer , Tanaka , Brault , Bryant , “ Hey19” 3b LA
….
Must be nice to be located in N.Y. where you can name your affiliates and no one else gets to.
I’m more inclined to apply Hanlon’s Razor — never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity — to this, given MLB’s PR “skills.”
Looks like Rochester for AAA for the Nats.
Indeed. Ghiroli tweeted it: https://twitter.com/britt_ghiroli/status/1329411391074283524?s=21
It’s a bit disappointing. I’d hoped the realignment might trigger more strategic thinking about the minors for the Nationals, since it’s been an afterthought for… their entire existence.
But there’s many other outcomes that would have been worse (Fresno, Nashville, etc.), but I’m still (naively) holding out hope for our new A ball club. More likely, we’ll get stuck again with whoever is left over after the other 29 have their pick.
Rochester had been the AAA affiliate for the Twins. The Twins AAA affiliate will now be the St. Paul Saints. The Saints must pay $20 million fee to minor league baseball to be granted AAA affiliate status. If the owning a minor league franchise is that awful these days, not sure why anyone would kick in the $20 million fee.
Apologies if this has been posted before, but here’s a great deep dive into Ray Torres’s winding path to ending up with the Nats as a free-agent signee after the 2020 draft:
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/article243630167.html
KW, I never knew anything about this guy, it’s a hella va story. No telling what we have here, but heaven knows we need help at catching.
The word from the Orioles is they are not negotiating with any new affiliates and are now deciding which affiliate to drop.
They originally wanted to drop Frederick but the pushback was large. Let’s see how this affects the Nats.
Tough, but not impossible, to fit a Maryland team into a redrawn twelve-team South Atlantic League (and if the Sally League goes that far north, again, that points to Fredericksburg being one of its teams). I think we’d probably have heard rumblings by now if Norfolk were demoted and Bowie moved up to Triple-A, although Norfolk is a better geographic fit with the Sally League and after all, Fresno is getting busted down to Low-A.
Something like this, maybe…
MID-ATLANTIC LEAGUE: Brooklyn, Hudson Valley, Lowell, Jersey Shore, Aberdeen, Wilmington
CAROLINA LEAGUE: Rome, Greenville, Asheville, Hickory, Winston-Salem, Greensboro
SOUTH ATLANTIC LEAGUE: Augusta, Columbia, Charleston, Myrtle Beach, Kannapolis, Fayetteville, Down East, Carolina, Salem, Lynchburg, Fredericksburg, Frederick
Shaving off that southern end of the Sally with Rome (and this exercise assumes Chattanooga either stays at Double-A or is dropped) still helps travel time a little, making it more palatable to fit Frederick into the league. The West Virginia Black Bears or the West Virginia Power are an option here, too, if one of the other teams (Lynchburg? Greenville?) is deemed to be expendable for the sake of keeping a minor league outpost in West Virginia. For that matter, Chattanooga and (say) Augusta could fit into the Carolina League if it’s an eight-team outfit, with one Midwest League team losing its affiliation and Lake County moving back into the Sally League, although that seems less likely.
And to clarify, my assumption here is that MLB is redrawing these leagues with geography in mind. The existing South Atlantic League has teams in Maryland, New Jersey, West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, while skipping over Virginia altogether. I don’t think the leagues are going to be set up that way this team with MLB having free rein to draw them as it wants to, because it’s really silly. So my assumption is the Carolina League will be shrunk down to be more geographically compact, while the South Atlantic League sloughs off some of its outlying teams (we know Jersey Shore, but also Lexington, etc.) so it’s not *quite* as sprawling.
I’m happy with the Rochester marriage at AAA, it’s a downtown stadium and quite nice. April is unplayable there, like Syracuse, but the rest of the time just fine.
You can conjure up a fun road trip north. I live in Virginia and Harrisburg is exactly a 2 hour drive and afterward it’s a 4.5 hour drive to Rochester.
It looks like the unsigned A team for the Nats will be in Maryland. Sao, I’ll defer to you on which one.
Delaware, I think. I think it will be Wilmington. The Royals seem likely to get a more geographically simpatico dance partner in the Midwest League at the High-A level (maybe Beloit?), which would leave the Nats as the closest team — by far — to Wilmington that isn’t already spoken for in the Mid-Atlantic League. That’d be a fun league, with Nats prospects (Wilmington), Orioles prospects (Aberdeen), Phillies prospects (Jersey Shore), Mets prospects (Brooklyn), Yankees prospects (Hudson Valley), and maybe Red Sox prospects (Lowell).