Yesterday saw the news break that Major League Baseball has a proposal out there to reduce the number of teams in the minor leagues by up to 42. At The New York Times, David Waldstein first noted that Major League Baseball is pushing for an overhaul of the Minor Leagues. Shortly after that, JJ Cooper had a far more expansive and more detailed article on it at Baseball America. You should read both of those stories before continuing, because there’s a whole lot of stuff to unpack. And you should probably read part 1 of my series on all of it, which looks at what the reduction in teams means from a jobs standpoint, for both MLB employees and employees of minor league teams.
Today I wanted to talk about the future impact on the game this could have. Some of this is going to be based around the premise of yesterday’s work that many of the teams wouldn’t actually be able to sustain themselves if they lost their Major League Baseball affiliation. If you believe that they’d still somehow be able to survive as a college wooden bat league you probably should stop reading this because you won’t agree with much of what is going to be written below.
Things are easier today than they would have been thirty years ago had this been introduced. Today you can watch 150 games on cable in just about any market you happen to live in. You can purchase MLB.tv and watch probably 25 teams or more all year long if you want to. More games are available on national television too, between Fox, Fox Sports 1, ESPN, ESPN2, and MLB Network. Those things weren’t options in 1990. You were lucky to get 15 local games a year, and then two national games per week.
But watching the game in person is still something that’s very different than watching the game at home. And for a large part of the country, watching the game in person is one of the great things about baseball. And the only way that they can do that is to take in a minor league baseball game. It’s not reasonable for a baseball fan in Billings, Montana to drive to Denver or Seattle to take in a professional baseball game. But those families and fans in and around the area can go see the Billings Mustangs play.
For many people in towns that have teams that will (or could) be eliminated they aren’t remotely close to a place where they can go see professional baseball in a reasonable manner. Being able to grow up watching baseball in person can make someone a fan for life. The family with young children who can afford to, and feel fine going to a game for the first 4-5 innings and then leave as the kids get restless/tired/bored, but over time as they get older stay for the entirety and have grown into fans of the game because it’s one of the things they did when they were young – what happens if that opportunity isn’t there in 40 cities around the country?
Rich Luker was quoted in a piece at The Athletic earlier this month showing research that showed this:
Someone who attends their first baseball game, major league or minor league, before the age of five will attend 58 percent more games in their life compared to someone whose first game waits until age 14, Luker and co. found.
This just feels more like, well, more of the same from Major League Baseball. They’ve continuously made moves that felt like cash grabs for the now, while not thinking about the sport in the future. They seem to care less about growing the sport down the line. I know that I’ve certainly been jaded towards ownership around Major League Baseball for a while now. You may have noticed that, too. But I have to admit, I saw this tweet and it felt so true that it hurt.
Every day it seems, a new story comes out about how MLB owners want to extract every last bit of value out of the sport itself, consequences be damned. I'll say it again, MLB is now just a private equity vehicle meant to be stripped for parts before the Cable TV bubble bursts.
— America's Next Karaoke Dad™? (@kwyrauch) October 18, 2019
There’s something to be said about the cable bubble bursting that probably deserves an entire article. But I fully believe we are going to see teams fall on hard times because the cable money they’ve been promised simply isn’t going to be there to pay them. Perhaps they also feel that is the case and are working their way towards stockpiling what they can now. Or maybe they are just like what feels like everything else that’s going on – just trying to cut costs as far as they possibly can, in any possible way that they can.
Blackout rules making it difficult to watch the team close to you, in a day and age where you can literally watch anything you want whenever you want, is about as “give us your money right now” as it gets. And while it has seemingly lightened up slightly, how MLB used to aggressively go after fans trying to share highlights on social media, was as backwards thinking as possible. Baseball doing next to nothing about the culture in the game where if someone shows any sort of personality at the plate they can just throw baseballs at them to teach them a lesson does nothing but turn off anyone remotely considered to be a young fan of the game.
Taking away access to professional baseball from these people, these cities, doesn’t help build future fans. It feels short-sighted. It feels like another step in the wrong direction for the sport of baseball.