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Yankees axe Trenton, Staten Island, Charleston teams that received $112m in public stadium money

access_time personNeil deMause

The long-promised contraction and reorganization of minor-league baseball began in earnest this weekend, as the New York Yankees announced they would be cutting ties with the Trenton Thunder, Staten Island Yankees, and Charleston RiverDogs, while adding affiliations with the Somerset Patriots (formerly in the independent Atlantic League) and Hudson Valley Renegades (formerly a short-season team affiliated with the Tampa Bay Rays). The Thunder and Yankees owners apparently learned the news via Twitter:

https://twitter.com/SIYanks/status/1325840959456874499

The Patriots, who play about an hour west of New York City, have long been one of the top-drawing teams in the Atlantic League, though with roughly the same number of fans per game (just over 5,000) as Trenton. Both Trenton and Staten Island have been offered spots in the Atlantic League, reports CBS Sports, but “their futures are unclear at the moment,” which is what happens when you’re suddenly cast into a league that has seen a bunch of teams fold since its 1998 opening, even after getting tens of millions of dollars each in public stadium funding.

Speaking of which, both Trenton and Staten Island got a ton of stadium subsidies as well, money that’s now at risk of going for naught thanks to the elimination of teams. Trenton’s stadium was built in 1994 at a cost of $16.2 million, paid for entirely by Mercer County. Charleston’s stadium was built by the city in 1997 for $19.5 million, with another $6 million in upgrades since to stop it from sinking into the earth. And Staten Island’s was opened in 2001 and cost a staggering $71 million, thanks to cleanup issues at the site, all of which was paid for by the citizens of New York City. It’s possible that both cities will get new indie teams — or even new affiliated teams, though that’s unlikely with the Mets already having the Brooklyn Cyclones and the Philadelphia Phillies four existing affiliates in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, and both of them looking to cut back on farm teams as well — but if not, we could see a renewed wave of shuttered new-ish stadiums.

That would be bad news for baseball fans and taxpayers alike, but potentially great news for MLB owners, who would simultaneously cut back on minor-league payrolls, reduce travel costs by consolidating teams near their parent clubs, and potentially get cities and minor-league teams alike into bidding wars to make sure they have chairs when the contraction music stops. We haven’t seen that yet, but you know it’s going to happen: If the Trenton Thunder, say, can’t line up a new big-league affiliation, how long do you think before its owners go back to Mercer County to claim that stadium upgrades are needed to lure away some other town’s team?

The Staten Island Yankees, meanwhile, included in their tweeted press release this line:

The Staten Island Yankees made every effort to accommodate MLB and New York Yankees requirements, including securing a commitment from New York City for ballpark upgrades

Wait, they secured what now? This was news to me, and I followed New York City ballpark spending even more closely than that on the rest of the planet; I’ve reached out for comment to the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the quasi-public agency that owns and operates the Staten Island stadium (though it’s been trying to ditch the “operates” part), and will post here when I learn anything more.

All this is certainly only the first show among many, with 29 other teams still set to announce which affiliates will be cast adrift. Just last night, in fact, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Giants are expected to ditch the Augusta GreenJackets and likely the Richmond Flying Squirrels as well. It’s still unclear when minor-league baseball will resume, thanks to the pandemic, but whenever it does, it could look very different than it has for the last several decades.

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Friday roundup: Two state legislators call for halt to Angels stadium sale, St. Louis MLS team mum on state tax credit repeal, Tampa mayor still eager to play footsie with Rays

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s D-Day for the Los Angeles Angels stadium sale plan, with the Anaheim city council set to hold its potentially one and only hearing on the matter today starting at 2 pm Pacific time. I’ll meet you back here then with this window open, but until then there’s lots of news:

  • California state assemblymember Tom Daly and state senator Tom Umberg have written an open letter to Anaheim calling for the vote to be postponed, noting, “Without knowing the final terms and conditions of the eventual sale, including the role the City will play in shaping the development of the land, how can the taxpayers of Anaheim know if the proposed sale achieves the maximum financial value for the City?” and laying out a bunch of as-yet-unanswered questions about the deal, including how the sale price was arrived at, how any deductions for building “community benefits” will be calculated, and how any decision can be reached when key details of the proposed development on the site won’t be finalized for months yet? Daly, you’ll recall, is a former Anaheim mayor who joined with another former Anaheim mayor, Tom Tait, to write an op-ed this week opposing the deal, which raises some important issues, like what’s with all these California politicians named Tom? And which is the best nickname now for the opposition, Band of Toms or Tom Tom Club? Just what we needed, more unanswered questions!
  • The owners of St. Louis’s expansion MLS franchise aren’t commenting on Gov. Mike Parson’s decision to withhold $30 million of requested state tax credits for the team’s stadium project, though they are going ahead with requesting highway ramp closures in February so that construction can begin. Does this mean they’re giving up on the $30 million tax subsidy, meaning it was never necessary to begin with to get the stadium project done? Or that they’re planning to work behind the scenes to get their money from somewhere, and see no point in making a public stink about it? Or maybe they’re just content to sit back and let local sports columnists call the governor “a teammate you can’t count on” and hope that shames him into changing his mind.
  • Tampa Mayor Jane Castor says when she first heard about the idea of the Tampa Bay Rays building new stadiums in both Montreal and Florida and splitting the season between them, she thought “that makes no sense” but now feels “let them explore it. It’s something new.” This is both not a ringing endorsement of the plan while also clearly an attempt to tell Rays owner Stuart Sternberg that she’s open to discussing a new stadium on whatever terms he likes, which coming from someone who showed up at a Rays playoff game in October wearing a team jersey and saying she both wants to help build Sternberg a stadium and also not spend any city money on a new stadium is right on brand in terms of trying to be all things to all people.
  • A Florida state legislator’s bill earlier this year to repeal the state’s sales-tax fund for sports stadium funding didn’t get anywhere, so now a different state legislator has submitted his own version. This is likely going nowhere fast, but given that no sports team has yet managed to tap the fund and none have even applied for money the last two years, this may be an answer to the age-old question of what happens when an movable object meets a stoppable force.
  • Oh yeah, I wrote an essay for Slate about MLB’s minor-league contraction proposal, concluding that while major-league owners may not quite have their brinkmanship ducks in a row — despite commissioner Rob Manfred’s hissy-fit declaration last week that maybe he’ll just stop affiliating with the minors altogether if they’re going to be that way — they do know that they’re going to use their cartel power (and antitrust exemption) for all it’s worth, just like when they colluded in the 1980s to not bid on each other’s free agents and … okay, that didn’t work out so well, but this time it’ll go great, you’ll see!
  • Charlotte is getting an MLS team and Raleigh isn’t, and the Raleigh News-Observer is upset, apparently because they don’t realize that eventually everyone will get their own MLS team.
  • And speaking of Charlotte, Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper may be in line to get $110 million worth of public money to revamp his current football stadium for soccer, but that doesn’t mean he’s giving up on his ultimate goal of “an improved” version of Tottenham Stadium with its retractable field to switch between American football and soccer. Something tells me he’s not planning to agree to a lease extension in exchange for that $110 million, or that being his final ask for public money.
  • NYC F.C. still hasn’t made any announcement about that Bronx stadium that the New York Times reported was in the works a year and a half ago, but they did announce that next year they’ll play four home games at a different baseball stadium than the one they’ve been calling home.
  • The Texas Rangers have released new renderings of proposed office buildings actually within their old stadium, raising a couple of important questions: Could the XFL’s Dallas Renegades still play there, if there’s still an XFL by then? And also, if that’s the new Rangers stadium depicted in the background, why isn’t it on fire?
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MLB’s minor league hit list would kill 42 teams that cities spent hundreds of millions on stadiums for

access_time personNeil deMause

The list of 42 minor league baseball teams targeted for elimination by Major League Baseball has leaked, and let’s get right to the names marked for death:

  • Appalachian League (advanced Rookie): Bluefield Blue Jays, Bristol Pirates, Burlington Royals, Danville Braves, Elizabethton Twins, Greeneville Reds, Johnson City Cardinals, Kingsport Mets, Princeton Rays
  • California League (advanced A): Lancaster Jethawks
  • Carolina League (advanced A): Frederick Keys
  • Eastern League (Double-A): Binghamton Rumble Ponies, Erie SeaWolves
  • Florida State League (advanced A): Daytona Tortugas, Florida Fire Frogs
  • Midwest League (full-season A): Burlington Bees, Clinton LumberKings, Quad Cities River Bandits
  • New York-Penn League (short-season A): Auburn Doubledays, Batavia Muckdogs, Connecticut Tigers, Lowell Spinners, Mahoning Valley Scrappers, State College Spikes, Staten Island Yankees, Vermont Lake Monsters, Williamsport Crosscutters
  • Northwest League (short-season A): Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, Tri-City Dust Devils 
  • Pioneer League (advanced Rookie): Billings Mustangs, Grand Junction Rockies, Great Falls Voyagers, Idaho Falls Chukars, Missoula PaddleHeads, Ogden Raptors, Orem Owlz, Rocky Mountain Vibes
  • Southern League (Double-A): Chattanooga Lookouts, Jackson Generals
  • South Atlantic League (full-season A): Hagerstown Suns, Lexington Legends, West Virginia Power 

Or, if you prefer, here’s a map:

In addition, many surviving teams would need to switch leagues: The Brooklyn Cyclones will reportedly make the leap all the way to Double-A to replace Binghamton, while other survivors of the NY-Penn League would join with join with remnants of the South Atlantic League in a new mid-Atlantic league. (I haven’t seen reporting yet on who’d shift levels to replace Erie or the two Southern League teams.) The Pioneer League would be eliminated entirely, while only the Pulaski Yankees would escape the flaming ruins of the Appalachian League.

If all this looks like a mish-mash of teams in smaller cities, teams in not-as-brand-new stadiums, and teams far from major league affiliates, that’s apparently exactly what it is. According to both published reports and sources I’ve spoken to, the downsizing plan was first concocted in the front office of the Houston Astros, the franchise most dedicated to using advanced techniques to gain a competitive edge, even if it means breaking the rules. As the Astros execs’ thinking went, advanced analytics (i.e., grading players based on such things as using high-speed cameras to measure body mechanics) could replace watching young players play actual baseball, saving the trouble of having to pay so many of them to do so. (Not that this is a huge expense — an entire single-A roster can be had for about $600,000 a year — but again, the Astros are all about exploiting every advantage.) And while Houston execs could and did reduce their minor-league affiliates on their own, from nine teams to seven, why should they have to compete against teams like the New York Yankees whose owners were willing to keep minor league teams stacked up like cordwood?

According to the New York Daily News’ Bill Madden, Astros GM Jeff Luhnow quickly found support from two other team GMs, David Stearns of the Brewers and Mike Elias of the Orioles, who had previously worked for him in Houston. And other team execs quickly realized that eliminating minor league teams could have other benefits as well: It could allow MLB to force realignments so that their affiliates would be closer geographically, enable the elimination of teams whose stadiums weren’t seen as up to par, and potentially provide increased franchise fees from teams whose owners wished to survive. Plus, if minor leaguers are going to insist in court on being paid minimum wage, that would go down a lot more smoothly if each franchise only had four minor league payrolls to cover. The contraction proposal, reports Madden, passed 30-0 in a vote of MLB teams earlier this year.

The eliminated franchise owners wouldn’t be entirely SOL: They could apply to join a newly formed “Dream League,” an ill-formed proposal that would involve wannabe pro players somehow being allocated to nearby leagues — “we can fill rosters with players from local markets,” Morgan Sword, MLB senior vice president of league economics and operations, enthused to the New York Times — that would receive cash subsidies from MLB, but would otherwise be on the hook for paying their own player payrolls. Minor league officials are doubtful many franchises could afford to operate on such a basis, with one unnamed source telling the Times a Dream League would be a “death sentence” for clubs, and another speculating that at best 10 of the 42 teams could survive.

And what would all of this mean for the cities that have supported minor league baseball by erecting stadiums, partly or entirely at public cost, to ensure the presence of a team? Just as a small sampling: New York City spent $71 million to build a ballpark for the Staten Island Yankees in 2001; Jackson spent $8 million on a stadium for the Generals in 1998, and has additionally chipped in $500,000 a year in operating subsidies since then; the SeaWolves just got $12 million in state money and the Rumble Ponies just received $5 million in state and city funds for upgrades to their ballparks. Chattanooga, meanwhile, has been discussing a new stadium to replace the Lookouts’ current one, which will turn an ancient 20 years old next year; that’ll presumably be off the agenda if there’s no team, but who’s to say that MLB won’t allow new applicants to the slimmed-down minor league register, if they come with snazzy enough stadium plans and a lucrative enough fee? Madden reports that “for over a year now, MLB has been asking Minor League teams to lobby their state governors and legislatures to enact legislation allotting ‘integrity fees’ — a percentage of the baseball gambling revenue in their states — that would generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for MLB,” and suggests that local officials won’t take too kindly to that if teams are being eliminated, but who’s to say if they’ll consider them if it would remove their teams from the hit list?

What is certain, if this plan reaches fruition, is lawsuits, and plenty of them: Teams, cities, and concessionaires alike could all sue MLB, since wiping out teams would mean abrogating tons of long-term leases and contracts that are in place. (“My God, we’ll be sued all over the place from these cities that have built or refurbished ballparks with taxpayer money, and this will really put our anti-trust exemption in jeopardy,” Madden reports an unnamed MLB official as saying. “It’s crazy.”) The Yankees could technically sue as well, given that they only granted permission for the Cyclones’ existence in their territory in exchange for being granted a Staten Island club in the same league, though if they voted for the plan, presumably that’s not in the cards.

This is all still just a preliminary negotiating proposal, mind you, and there is a ton still to hash out before the MLB-MiLB operating agreement is rewritten sometime next year. (The Winter Meetings from December 8–12 are bound to be hopping with plans and counterplans; anyone feel like crowdfunding me a trip to San Diego?) But by establishing its intentions and sending out the message that all that’s left is to haggle over the details, MLB is clearly in a position to get minor league team owners thinking about how they can buy their way off that list; I can’t fathom a guess as to how this all will end, except that it will almost certainly be really, really ugly and benefit those with the most cash to burn, because that’s how monopoly capitalism always functions.

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Selig threatens to send muscle to sit in on Rays lease talks

access_time personNeil deMause

Crazy busy day for me today, so let’s get right to it: Bud Selig yesterday threw the entire weight of his ominous presence behind the Tampa Bay Rays stadium push, telling reporters that Rays owner Stuart Sternberg had given him a “very discouraging” update on talks with St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster on getting out of his Tropicana Field lease, and that he was considering sending someone from his office in to intervene:

“We were optimistic that this was moving in a very positive direction,” Selig said. “Unfortunately, we are stalled. It’s serious enough that in the last 48 hours I’ve given very strong consideration to assigning someone from MLB to get involved in the process and find out what is going on.”

Oooh, scary! Shadow of the Stadium has a good rundown of all the times Selig has expressed “concern” about the Rays before, and one Oakland A’s fan notes that Selig’s intervention hasn’t really moved things along for her team’s stadium issues. And it’s hard to see how an MLB representative is going to significantly affect talks between Sternberg and St. Pete Mayor Bill Foster, who 1) said yesterday that talks are proceeding and “this is not news,” and 2) has 14 more years of lease in his pocket and knows damn well that he doesn’t have to give that up unless he’s happy with what he’s being offered.

What Selig’s statement does do is what league commissioners always hope they’ll do: spark panic among the sports media and local elected officials. Already, Hillsborough County Commission chair Ken Hagan, who’s been leading the drive to build the team a new stadium in Tampa, yesterday declared the “sense of urgency” to be “borderline dire.” To which Shadow of the Stadium replies:

Things can’t be too dire: the Rays have a secure home for 14 more years if nothing else happens.  The team consistantly pulls in some of the top profits in baseball, the franchise’s value has more than tripled under Sternberg, and MLB’s national television revenue is exploding.  Relocation is not possible anytime soon, and contraction will never be an option.

Details, details. Hey, everybody, let’s write an editorial talking about the threat of the Rays being moved or contracted out of existence, even though Selig didn’t threaten either of those things!

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