The Frederick Keys, the High-A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles for the past 31 years, led the Carolina League in per-game attendance in 2019. The team is ideally situated 50 miles west of Baltimore, making it easy for the parent club to monitor prospects, send Major League veterans for rehab assignments, and forge a stronger relationship between its players and the Maryland fan base. The Keys are, by all accounts, good members of the Frederick community, last year winning the Carolina League’s Matt Minker Community Service Award for donations to fight homelessness and to aid disadvantaged youth.
Despite all that, the Frederick franchise faces the prospect of being shut down following the 2020 season.
Frederick is on a penny-wise, pound-foolish list of 42 Minor League Baseball teams tentatively scheduled to lose their affiliation with Major League Baseball at the end of the 2020 season, if the season ever begins. The proposal would reduce the number of minor league affiliates to 120, or four per team. (That figure does not include the rookie league teams in the Arizona and Gulf Coast leagues, which begin play after the June amateur draft.) The proposal was an opening, cost-cutting sally in Major League Baseball’s negotiations with Minor League Baseball for a new contract.
The majors proposed this poorly conceived plan last fall, and even members of Congress, who know a thing or two about bad ideas, recognized it for what it was. More than 100 members wrote to major league commissioner Rob Manfred criticizing the idea, and, in March, the House passed H.R. 6020, which would direct the Government Accountability Office to assess the impact of the proposal on local communities that stand to lose teams. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders, in a rare intersection between his rhetoric and reality, correctly described the plan as “an absolute disaster for baseball fans, workers, and communities throughout the country.”
The proposal might be nothing more than a cynical MLB bargaining tool, an attempt to wring more money out of minor league teams. But it reflects an arbitrary, one-size-fits-all model that bears no relationship to the disparities between large-market and small-market franchises. Last year, for example, the Boston Red Sox, fresh off the 2018 World Series championship, had a major league-high $213 million payroll. The Pittsburgh Pirates, the consummate small-market team, had a $66 million payroll.
That disparity means that the Red Sox and Pirates have to run their businesses differently. The Pirates, unable to compete for nine-figure free agents, have to focus on player development. That means constantly churning through promising young prospects, trying to cobble together a winning combination before those players log six years of service, at which point they can enter free agency. In reality, Pittsburgh’s window for prospects is even shorter — four years or so. After that, their best young players begin making serious money via arbitration while their trade value is shriveling. The Red Sox, by contrast, have the resources to lock up their young talent and bid for the game’s top free agents.
That means that the minor league pipeline is significantly more important to small-market teams. It’s not just a more efficient way for them to compete. It’s the only way. If checkbook-challenged franchises such as the Pirates or the Orioles or the Tampa Bay Rays want to have more than four minor league teams, MLB should applaud them rather than shackle them.
Player development is the lifeline of low-budget franchises, but it’s a notorious crapshoot. Mike Piazza, a 62nd-round draft pick, became a Hall of Famer. Brien Taylor, arguably the best left-handed pitching prospect of the past half-century, was picked No. 1 overall by the New York Yankees in the 1991 draft, but he never played a day in the majors. The lesson: Throw a lot of darts at the board and hope that a few stick. So, if the Pirates want to have eight minor league franchises because that’s a more efficient means for them to compete, why is Manfred objecting?
As cost-cutting proposals go, this one seems particularly laughable given the paltry salaries minor leaguers receive. Rather than looking at the minor leagues as an expensive line item, Manfred and his bean counters should regard it as a marketing investment, a chance to spread baseball and goodwill to far-flung communities such as Billings, Montana, and Burlington, North Carolina, two of the 42 towns currently in limbo. Fans in those towns might never see a major league game in person, but, when they watch a game on TV, they’ll be able to say, “I remember when” some hotshot rookie was 19 years old, fresh out of high school, and struggling to hit the breaking ball. Major League Baseball can’t put a price tag on that.
Martin Kaufmann has covered sports for more than two decades, including 16 years as senior editor at Golfweek.
