St. Paul Saints – Field of Schemes

MLB redraws its minor-league map, including demoting team Wichita spent $75m to lure there

December 1, 2020December 1, 2020 Neil deMause

The fallout of MLB’s plan to jettison 42 minor-league affiliates to save money on paying players pittance wages is coming fast and furious, with big-league teams switching farm clubs while other teams scramble not to be left without a chair when the music stops:

The St. Paul Saints, founded in 1993 as one of baseball’s most successful independent-league teams, will now be converted into the Minnesota Twins‘ Triple-A farm team. The Sugar Land Skeeters previously announced they will likewise go from indie ball to affiliate ball, as the Triple-A team of the Houston Astros.
Since every MLB team has exactly one Triple-A affiliate, this means two teams will have to get demoted to Double-A, and those will apparently be the San Antonio Missions and the Wichita Wind Surge. The Wind Surge demotion is especially notable because the team never actually played a game at the Triple-A level (it is the former New Orleans Baby Cakes, relocated in 2020 right before the pandemic wiped out the minor-league season), and also because Wichita just allocated more than $75 million to a new stadium to lure a Triple-A team, and is now right back in the Double-A Texas League where it was until 2007.
MLB gave the owners of the Fresno Grizzlies and the city of Fresno until yesterday to accept demotion from Triple-A to Single-A, or else be left without an affiliated team at all. Following a behind-closed-doors council meeting yesterday, city attorney Doug Sloan released a statement saying MLB had agreed to give the city more time, but not how much more time. (MLB is supposedly set on releasing final team affiliations today or tomorrow.)
No, I don’t get where the additional Triple-A team would come from if Fresno were demoted, unless maybe this would give San Antonio or Wichita a reprieve? (UPDATE: The Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp are reportedly in line to jump from Double-A to Triple-A, thanks, Facebook commenter!)
The entire Pioneer League is becoming an independent “partner league,” which according to the press release seems to involve MLB giving them some seed money (“initial funding for the league’s operating expenses”) plus “scouting technology” (uh, radar guns?) and then cutting them loose to sink or swim.
The Mahoning Valley Scrappers, State College Spikes, Trenton Thunder, West Virginia Black Bears, and Williamsport Crosscutters, all of which were set to lose their affiliated teams, will instead become part of a grab-bag MLB Draft League, which will also get that “state-of-the-art scouting technology,” plus “educational programming designed to prepare them for careers as professional athletes.” (Make your own jokes here.) Will the players get paid? Given that the league’s FAQ brags about how there’s no fee for players to play in it, almost certainly not! (Also, the FAQ warns that “players need to pay their way to get to the league at the start date,” so think on that before you submit your application to play shortstop.)

The offseason affiliate dance is a time-honored tradition by now, but this winter’s is something entirely different, and not just because of the contraction plan: MLB effectively took over the formerly independent Minor League Baseball organization in September, simply by refusing to negotiate a new operating agreement and demanding that MiLB hand over the keys. That means that instead of negotiating with individual MiLB teams as in the past, MLB can simply redraw the minor-league map and issue edicts: If you’re not happy being a Single-A team, Fresno, no more shopping around for a Triple-A affiliate on your own, because MLB has already decided that for you.

In other words, it’s extending MLB’s cartel power — or monopoly power, depending on whether you consider the league an association of competitors or one big company with 30 co-owners — to govern all of the minor leagues as well. And that’s a scary concept, and not just if you’re one of the people who bought gear with the hideous Wichita Wind Surge logo in anticipation of Triple-A ball. While MLB’s offer to Fresno right now is take-it-or-leave-it, there’s nothing stopping the league in the future from exacting stadium or lease concession demands from minor-league cities, or risk losing their teams to wherever MLB decides to move them. While hosting a minor-league team has always been dicey since they often have a relatively short lifespan, at least there was a silver lining in that if one MLB team abandoned you there were 29 others to shoot for; now, the minors are all a single-source negotiation, and that’s bad news for cities’ leverage.

The other benefit to MLB, of course, is that it is transitioning lots of minor-league players to playing for “exposure” instead of actual paychecks; in addition to the Draft League, the Appalachian League is becoming a summer league for college players, who also won’t be paid. This is such a common practice now in the work world that it has its own Twitter account for horror stories, but it hadn’t spread to pro sports until now — there’s a class action suit trying to force pro sports teams to pay their players at least minimum wage, but until then, it looks like baseball is determined to make lots of wannabe major leaguers start out their careers by doing season-long unpaid tryouts. Maybe teams like Trenton and Williamsport will at least allow players to trade autographs for sandwiches, that seems like a fair solution.

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Friday roundup: Congress gets riled up over minor-league contraction, Calgary official proposes redirecting Flames cash, plus what’s the deal with that Star Trek redevelopment bomb anyway?

November 29, 2019November 29, 2019 Neil deMause

Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. readers, who if they haven’t yet may want to read the New Yorker’s thoughtful takedown of the myths that the holiday was built on. Or there’s always the movie version, which has fewer historical details but is shorter and features a singing turkey.

And speaking of turkeys, how are our favorite stadium and arena deals faring this holiday week?

Add the Tri-City Dust Devils to the list of minor-league teams in the middle of getting publicly funded stadium upgrades that may now get eliminated by MLB’s push to slash the size of the minors. The U.S. House of Representatives has formed a task force to oppose the plan, which normally isn’t exactly the kind of thing that makes anyone quake in their boots, but since this move has managed to piss off both Democrats and Republicans with minor-league teams in their home districts, there’s at least a slim chance it may actually mean something.
Meanwhile, a Minnesota state representative wants to build a new $42 million minor-league baseball stadium in Shakopee just outside Minneapolis-St. Paul. The would-be Metro Millers would join the St. Paul Saints in the independent-league American Association, except that the MLB minor-league contraction plan would reportedly shift the Saints to being an affiliated team — except that Saints general manager Derek Sharrer says MLB hasn’t yet contacted his team about it. Happy not-thinking-things-through-before-announcing-them week, everybody!
Calgary city councillor Evan Woolley was set yesterday to table a proposal to repeal the Flames arena deal and instead use the city cash that would go into it to fund light rail, a new downtown police station, and affordable housing. But I can’t find any indication in the media of whether he did so or how it went over with the rest of the council — I even scrolled through the Calgary Herald city hall reporter’s Twitter feed, so dedicated am I to bringing you all the facts — so instead let’s focus on how “table” is its own antonym depending on whether you’re speaking American or Canadian.
The mayor of Inglewood is comparing the new Los Angeles Rams and Chargers stadium to the Genesis Device in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan that destroyed entire planets in order to reconfigure them for human colonization, and doesn’t seem to get the irony, but then, neither did The Wrath of Khan.
59% of Washington, D.C. residents would like the city’s NFL team with the horrible name to build a new stadium on the old RFK Stadium site, but 52% oppose using city funds to pay for it. WTOP sports reporter Dave Preston sums this up pretty well: “Of course fans want to root for their home team at home but when it comes to paying for it, people don’t want to. Why would they?”
The Arena Football League has officially gone bankrupt, putting an end to that entire “maybe we’ll just play the entire season on the road!” thing that was floated last month. I’m pretty sure no arenas were actually built or refurbished specifically for the AFL — the last six teams in existence were Albany, Atlantic City, Baltimore, Columbus, Philadelphia, and Washington — but losing six home games will … okay, this clearly doesn’t matter to anyone who isn’t an arena football fan, and if there were arena football fans they wouldn’t have needed the talcum powder.
The New York Yankees are again looking to refinance the debt on their ten-year old stadium, and since it’s technically city debt that the Yankees are paying off in order to get a tax dodge from the IRS, they’re having to ask the city to refinance it for them. Which, maybe the city could take this opportunity to ask for some of the $691 million it spent on the stadium? Just an idea!
Speaking of the Bronx, 161st Street BID executive director Cary Goodman — who, full disclosure, when I was in high school I briefly worked for on a presidential campaign where our candidate dropped out before getting to the primary in our state, which was a valuable lesson in the frustrations of electoral organizing in a two-party system — is proposing that any new NYC F.C. stadium in the Bronx be owned by local residents, which sounds like a great idea until you realize that stadiums don’t make any money, teams that play in them do.
Canada’s federal government has no interest in paying for a new Ottawa Senators arena, which should come as no surprise, but props to Canadian Minister of Infrastructure Catherine McKenna for putting it very Canadianly: “Well that’s not something we normally fund.”
Nobody wants to buy Golden State Warriors tickets now that the team is terrible, but ha ha too late, suckers, you already bought them last year when the team was good! The San Francisco 49ers were clearly onto something when they pioneered the “sell all your seat licenses right before your team takes a nosedive” strategy. Also, the Rams and Chargers are clearly doing this all wrong.
The wannabe MLB owners in Portland got another six-month extension on trying to figure out how to build a stadium on Port of Portland property, which good luck with that since still nobody knows how it would be paid for or how fans would get to and from games there. Maybe they can instead shoot for a more manageable target, like figuring out what the heck the people are supposed to be doing in this picture?

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St. Paul Saints stadium funding gap could be as high as $29m

July 11, 2013 Neil deMause

If you’re depressed about the state of newspapers after this, here’s something to cheer you up: a long post on the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s website that actually lays out the math for a proposed stadium deal and reports its findings. The stadium in question is for the minor-league St. Paul Saints, it’s set to cost $66 million, and nobody knows where nearly half that money will come from. Simplifying the article’s charts a bit:

Ballpark Construction Capital Cost: $66.1 million

Upfront Capital Cost Breakdown (by Municipality / Private Entity):
State of Minnesota: $27,000,000
City of St. Paul: $9,000,000 *Agreed to provide $17 million
St. Paul Saints Organization: $1,500,000

Total Monies Available: $37,500,000 *$66.6m Total Cost with $37.5m Avail. in 2013 = $29m shortfall

The Saints have also agreed to pay an additional $340,000 a year, though as they won’t own the building, the article notes, this is more reasonably considered “rent” than an actual contribution to the construction cost. And in any event, this still leaves the stadium with a rather large shortfall, in part because of increased environmental cleanup costs, in part because the Saints tacked on some new features to make their minor-league park “first class,” and in part because St. Paul officials apparently have some trouble with addition.

The story goes on to estimate the tax revenue benefits to Minnesota, and while the numbers are a bit speculative, it’s clear that the total impact amounts to “not much.” If the Saints are able to increase attendance from 5,000 to 6,000 per game (the new stadium is supposed to hold 7,000), concludes the article, “For St. Paul to make up its end of the financing bargain, they would need to immediately impose a $1.13 tax per ticket sold over the next 25 years, not accounting for debt service payments.”

There’s more that could be done to fine-tune this analysis, but in all it’s a fine piece of reporting, and we should applaud the Star Tribune for having one of its reporters actually crunch the numbers rather than just taking team marketing claims at their word. So, props to Nathaniel Hood, who is … “a transportation planner and blogger living in St. Paul”? Wait, this is an op-ed post on the paper’s YourVoices section, not something that the Star Tribune assigned to one of its own reporters? Okay, you can go ahead and be depressed about the state of newspapers after all.

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