Reese Kaplan -- Manfred is Loving His Antitrust Exemption

Almost vanished from the baseball fan plethora of topics is the major league plan to contract up to 42 minor league franchises from affiliation with the 30 professional teams.  If you’re a fan in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston or Atlanta, this change might not seem to matter much to you.  However, if you are a resident of one of the 42 teams about to be flushed away, then it’s a huge deal and one that bears a bit more examination.

To hear the big leagues tell it, there are some minor league franchises whose facilities and revenues are simply not commensurate with what the majors deem is necessary to prepare young ballplayers for a life of private jets and large income tax bills.  According to a piece from NPR, “MLB says contraction would be a way to streamline a minor league system where there are inferior, even unsafe stadiums and where major league owners pay too much for minor league operations. After a contraction, the argument goes, the remaining minor league players could be paid more. Broshuis' class-action lawsuit against MLB, filed in 2014, claims many minor leaguers aren't even paid minimum wage. The current contract between the majors and minors ends after next season. Last week, Commissioner Manfred said he's committed to resolving the issues through bargaining.”

Let’s take a closer look at the numbers.  More than ¼ of all minor league teams would be eliminated.  While making fluff talk about paying the minor leaguers more money is a good thing (if it actually happened), the fact is that change is going to impact not just fans but workers in a very negative way in 42 locations around the USA.  Closing a stadium means the loss of jobs, the elimination of a form of entertainment for the community and a burden on the taxpayers who are often the ones who funded the stadium construction in the first place.

Recently mayors from some of the soon-to-be impacted cities got together to discuss the ramifications this proposal will have on their citizens.  The picture they painted was not pretty.  Kevin Reichard of Ballpark Digest wrote, “Calling the move by MLB a “major league error,” Berke (Chattanooga mayor) says his city is the kind of market MLB would be misguided to lose: with a long history of pro baseball, Chattanooga is an up-and-coming city with robust job growth and a strong real-estate market, sporting millennial demographics most marketers highly covet. Chattanooga Lookouts (Class AA; Southern League) owner Jason Freier has been working for some time on a new-ballpark plan, but the contraction proposal would short-circuit that effort.”

One area of grave concern for all minor league mayors is the future of public funding as it relates to the expansion, renovation and construction of minor league ballparks.  With this very public action initiated by major league baseball, all minor league mayors and team owners have to worry that they could be next on the hit parade and will not want to go deeper in debt if the source of revenue could be obliterated. 

Locally for the Mets, the two affected franchises on the nuke-‘em list are the Binghamton Rumble Ponies and the Kingsport Mets.  I’m sure the many players, vendors, stadium workers, parking lot attendants and fans in their communities are not happy campers.  Here’s hoping that the money saved by the parent clubs can at least partially make its way to the players who remain affiliated so that they can at least afford food and rent.  That, of course, doesn’t help the other people one bit.