Goldberg-Strassler: The last great minor-league contraction
From SABR member Jesse Goldberg-Strassler at Ballpark Digest on December 5, 2019:
With the proposed contraction of 42 Minor League Baseball teams, the relationship between MiLB and MLB could be defined yet again. Here’s a look at the last time MiLB contraction occurred on a mass scale—and how differently the major actors worked together to save the sport.
Ballpark Digest has been intensively covering the ongoing PBA negotiations between Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball, from the initial public revelation of MLB’s plan for MiLB realignment to the release of specific insight into MLB’s realignment proposal and the reaction of elected officials on MiLB’s behalf around the country. Recently, Ballpark Digest publisher Kevin Reichard outlined how MiLB could address MLB’s concerns without full-scale contraction.
The potential for wholesale realignment of Minor League Baseball carries far-reaching consequences from league to league and state to state. On FanGraphs, Meg Rowley and Ben Clemens conducted a study on how Major League Baseball’s realignment plan would effectively remove Minor League Baseball as an option for as many as 16 million people across the country.
Read the full article here: https://ballparkdigest.com/2019/12/05/the-last-great-milb-contraction/
Originally published: December 10, 2019. Last Updated: December 10, 2019.