Home United States USA — mix Key questions as minor league baseball officially cancels 2020 season

Key questions as minor league baseball officially cancels 2020 season

275
0
SHARE

The news that minor league baseball won’t be played this year is official. Here’s what we know about what it means for the future of the farm leagues.
In news that was entirely unsurprising, minor league baseball president Pat O’Conner announced Tuesday that this year’s minor league season has been canceled.
« These are unprecedented times for our country and our organization as this is the first time in our history that we’ve had a summer without minor-league baseball played, » O’Conner said in a statement. « While this is a sad day for many, this announcement removes the uncertainty surrounding the 2020 season and allows our teams to begin planning for an exciting 2021 season of affordable family entertainment. »
While the news was expected, that didn’t lessen the general fear and uncertainty about the immediate future of professional baseball swelling below the level of Major League Baseball. The reason for the cancellation — the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that has gripped the globe for most of 2020 — is beyond the control of officials at any level of the game. But as unfortunate as those circumstances would be even in normal times, for MiLB teams, the timing is especially fraught.
The Professional Baseball Agreement, the document that governs the relationship between MLB and its affiliates, expires in September. Last fall, in advance of baseball’s annual winter meetings, news leaked of baseball’s plan to cut the total number of affiliated teams in the minors from 160 to 120. That news kicked off a fiery volley of rhetoric between the respective league offices as both sides positioned themselves on the public relations and political fronts.
That building fight screeched to a halt when the coronavirus stole the spotlight, putting everything into months of limbo. Teams throughout the minors waited out the combative talks between MLB and the MLBPA regarding the season at the sport’s highest level, all while holding out hope of salvaging at least part of a campaign of their own. Those hopes were abandoned with Tuesday’s announcement.
The fallout from the minors’ lost season will take months to untangle, even as the mostly dormant talks regarding a new PBA invariably resume. Still, let’s try to take a snapshot of the current landscape of the minor leagues after Tuesday’s sad news.
1. Why did this happen?
The pandemic was the reason, of course. From a more technical standpoint, however, it was this: To play baseball, you need to have players. Minor league teams weren’t going to get them and were officially informed as such this week.
The structural foundation of the PBA is that minor league organizations provide the infrastructure — the cities, teams, stadiums, leagues, umpires, etc. — with which their Major League Baseball overlords can develop their future players. Thus big league clubs supply players to their affiliates and pick up the vast majority of the associated labor cost.
However, when MLB announced its own return last week, it was not a full resumption of operations. Teams have been announcing player pools of up to 60 players for the truncated big league season, but that’s it. Players not on the active roster, which starts off at 30 players per team and decreases as the season progresses, are assigned to a taxi squad. The taxi squad players will include a number of high-level prospects who will receive some developmental work. However, this will be done through practice, simulated games and workouts as opposed to the normal competition of minor league games.
Simply put: Big league teams will not be assigning players to their affiliates. Thus minor league teams could not have conducted a season even if they wanted to.
2. What happens to the players?
As mentioned, many of the top prospects are being included in their organization’s player pool, even if there are no plans to have them see big league competition this season. Those players will receive some much needed developmental repetitions. Some of those players, and other lesser prospects who would otherwise qualify as organizational depth, will indeed see action in the majors as teams try to navigate this unusual, 60-game season.

Continue reading...