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    Hello. I've been to a game and am now definitely not a complete arriviste.

    So. Jays to win the entire thing. Yes?

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      Certainly the front runners for the Canadian Championship

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        YES!

        Wait, what?

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          So Gero, you will have a local team next year after all.

          The A's are moving their AAA affiliate from Nashville to the new ballpark in Summerlin. They are not expected to retain the 51s name.

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            To be clear, the Nashville Sounds aren’t moving. The A’s are now affiliated with Las Vegas and the Mets are shifting their affiliation to Syracuse, because they bought the club. Nashville will be the Rangers affiliate. Their current affiliate, Round Rock, shifts to the Astros, so Fresno shifts to the Nationals, who were affiliated with Syracuse.

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              Exactly

              “moving” was at best imprecise

              It seems to me that pretty much everyone, with the exception of the Nationals and maybe Rangers, are better off with the new affiliations. I trust that the Mets will retain the historic Chiefs moniker.

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                HP beat me to it, the players are contracted to and paid by the major league affiliate and moved around to meet the demands of that parent club. With most minor leagues operating a half season system it's not uncommon for MILB teams to field almost entirely different lineups in the second half. Minor league club in the main are not owned by a major league club but independently with some owners having two or more sometimes int the same league.

                But there's more as the AAA Brewers affiliate, Colorado Springs, are moving to San Antonio chiefly because Milwaukee see no benefit in having a high-altitude team at that level so develop more of their major leaguers through AA Biloxi. They were left with the Sky Sox after a post season shuffle when the Rockies switched to Albuquerque and they were the last team in the room without a triple-A club.

                However there's already a double-A Texas League club in San Antonio, the Missions, affiliated to San Diego so they're off to Amarillo. But that's not all as Colorado Springs will now switch to the short season rookie Pioneer League taking the place of the Milwaukee club based in Helena.

                So to recap Colorado Springs shift level from top to bottom, San Antonio move up a class, Amarillo gain a team and Helena lose theirs. I'm glad to learn this stuff only happens in even years.

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                  It can happen in odd years as well. It all depends on when the affiliation contracts expire (though it is true that more expire in odd years, thus allowing for massive shifts like the one you describe).

                  It's interesting to see how analytics have discouraged major league teams from having their upper level minor league affiliates in locations with extreme conditions (altitude and wind being the most common). Their is an increasing belief that such conditions drive pitching prospects to despair, while giving hitting prospects unearned confidence in their talents.

                  Supporting a minor league team is an extreme case of rooting for laundry. Player turnover is extreme, and the better players will leave first. That can happen in the middle of the season, and it is quite common for teams to lose prominent players for the playoffs after the major league rosters expand after 1 September.

                  And even the laundry changes often, as teams are increasingly tempted by "quirky" rebrands that are thought to increase merchandise sales.

                  This is the less the case in the "independent" leagues, which are outside of the official minor league system and often feature older players who have established ties to the communities they represent. We still miss the independent incarnation of the Newark Bears, who gave up the ghost several years ago.

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                    I read a good piece (which I'll post if can ever find it again) where a fan of Triple-A Charlotte Knights moaned about that very thing. That a club which is to all intents a step below the major league has no control over who plays for it, when they play and can be moved out overnight if the situation demends was not what he wanted from his sports team. I guess in a city like Charlotte with an NFL and an NBA team that might be a valid point, whereas further down the leagues it's about the promotions, the thirsty thursdays, the all-you-can-eat days and the bobblehead giveaways as much as the action on the field.

                    It's noticeable that across all divisions of the minor leagues playoff attendances are almost always lower than the regular season average. It's as though they're an afterthought that no one particularly cares about. There's generally no promotional stuff going alongside them either.

                    Most of those quirky rebrands happen in season too - a number of teams have food themed days, the Iostopes become the Green Chiles for a night, Fresno Grizzlies and the Lehigh Valley Ironpigs rebrand and have a tacos versus bacon series.

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                      Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                      Exactly

                      “moving” was at best imprecise

                      It seems to me that pretty much everyone, with the exception of the Nationals and maybe Rangers, are better off with the new affiliations. I trust that the Mets will retain the historic Chiefs moniker.
                      I suspect they will. The Chiefs have shifted to portraying the Chief as a train, rather than an Iroquois person in headdress. The Chiefs were in big financial trouble not long ago so this will hopefully stabilize them and, perhaps, the deal between the A's and Vegas will stabilize them, though it is sad that they're planning to ditch the 51 name.

                      Perhaps the A's are making planning to start using Vegas as a relocation threat.


                      It's noticeable that across all divisions of the minor leagues playoff attendances are almost always lower than the regular season average. It's as though they're an afterthought that no one particularly cares about. There's generally no promotional stuff going alongside them either.
                      Indeed, the attendance for the playoffs can be really small, even in AAA. I overheard the GM of our local team (State College Spikes, Cardinals, New York-Penn League, A - Short Season) said that most regular season tickets are season tickets - usually to businesses that don't even use all the tickets they have - or group sales (schools, churches, companies, youth teams, etc) that buy them months in advance. A team doesn't know if its going to be in the playoffs until maybe a few weeks, at most, before they start so its very hard to sell those tickets. Plus, they're in early September, by which time kids are just starting school and afterschool activities. Of course, football sucks all the oxygen out of the room so whatever meager media coverage minor league teams contracts even further.

                      The only people who come to the playoff games are the handful of people who are actually paying attention to the team's on-field fortunes. But that small group of people can actually create a better atmosphere than a full crowd. A typical crowd is mostly people just there to bring their kids to see the Cowboy Monkey Rodeo or whatever, or because their church group brought them, etc. They spend the whole game chatting about non-baseball stuff, trying to keep their kids from running off, stuffing their faces with garbage, etc. Whereas the playoff crowd tend to just be the obsessives. I've been to a few Spikes playoff games - both wins and losses - and the vibe is like a high school game or, perhaps, a midweek non-league football match. And the players are really into it, which helps.

                      But increasingly, I'm losing interest in minor league baseball for all the reasons mentioned. I just have this "you don't care about me, so why should I care about you?" feeling towards it. Of course major league and college teams don't really "care" about fans like me either, but at least they're trying to build the best team they can. It's not all in service to some other team that may be hundreds or thousands of miles away.

                      Independent baseball creates a little more connection with the players, but then those clubs have a harder time staying in business at all and also indulge a lot of the entertainment nonsense so I don't know if that's a whole lot better.

                      And, as explained above, minor league teams come and go and change names a lot, not just because of the machinations of the major league clubs but because there are just a lot more cities that are big enough to have a minor league team and a lot more owners or potential owners who can afford to own them and that's obviously more true the lower one is on the pyramid, so it is less stable. If the owners and/or city doesn't invest in the demanded stadium upgrades, the big league team will find a city/owner that will. And then cities are stuck with a baseball stadium that is too big and costly for high school baseball, not good enough for professional baseball, and not really useful for anything else. (I'm worried that is going to happen to Altoona - there has been sabre-rattling that the owners or city need to make some upgrades (I'm not sure what. It looks fine to me). Altoona is the smallest city in the EL, but I'm not sure where else they would go.)
                      Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 19-09-2018, 15:05.

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                        I see that you have quite a deep understanding of the minor leagues. Bravo.

                        The temporary rebrands are to me somehow less offensive than the permanent ones. If the Staten Island Yankees believe that they can shift some merch by playing as the Pizza Rats for a weekend or two, who am I to stop them. Similarly, teams that have only played under an identity for a couple of years aren't abandoning much heritage when they decide to become the Rumble Ponies (Binghamton) or the Rubber Ducks (Akron). I'm also not at all a fan of clubs that just mimic the MLB team name (even though the Iowa Cubs do just that).

                        What gets me more are long-time identities that are abandoned without much thought. I read last night that the Mets expect to rebrand the Syracuse Chiefs, which would be a genuine loss, as Syracuse's club has been called the Chiefs since the 1930s.

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                          Perhaps the A's are making planning to start using Vegas as a relocation threat.
                          Recall that they played more than a dozen home games there when Mount Davis was being finished.

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                            Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                            Recall that they played more than a dozen home games there when Mount Davis was being finished.
                            I didn't know that.

                            I'm not sure what the current status of the A's new stadium plans are. It would be sad if they followed the Raiders to Las Vegas. There seems to be an assumption out there that the Golden Knights success proves that Vegas is a big league town and will support any team that moves there. I don't think that assumption is very sound.


                            The temporary rebrands are to me somehow less offensive than the permanent ones. If the Staten Island Yankees believe that they can shift some merch by playing as the Pizza Rats for a weekend or two, who am I to stop them. Similarly, teams that have only played under an identity for a couple of years aren't abandoning much heritage when they decide to become the Rumble Ponies (Binghamton) or the Rubber Ducks (Akron). I'm also not at all a fan of clubs that just mimic the MLB team name (even though the Iowa Cubs do just that).
                            My understanding is that a lot of the clever names originally came into being to stabilize the "brand," rather than to keep up with a fad. Because in the not too distant past - before anyone figured out how minor league baseball could actually make money* - a lot of teams would just be called whatever their current parent club were called, and it changed every few years. So it was better to just pick something unique and stick with it. Like Williamsport because the Crosscutters when they switched from the Cubs to the Pirates and have kept that name even after switching to the Phillies.

                            And now that those teams have shown the merchandising potential, even the teams that are owned by the parent club or reliably affiliated with it, want in on that action - Binghamton Mets to Rumble Ponies, Scranton Wilkes-Barre Yankees become the Railriders, etc. The I-Cubs are one of the last to hold their parent-club's name, but if someday the Cubs decide they want to put a AAA team in Evansville or somesuch, the Iowa Cubs will either cease to exist or, more likely, be the recipient of some other relocated team and change their name to the Des Moines RiverBanditz or some shit.

                            The Staten Island Yankees announced plans to permanently change their name to something else but then abandoned that plan. I don't know what the status of that is, but I suspect their fanbase is 90% Yankees fans and let the team know that they wanted to stay with Yankees. But in most cases, the minor league team isn't located so close to the parent club, so naming it thusly would probably alienate a lot of potential fans. Or, at least, deter them from buying their merch.


                            But now even some teams that had a unique name insist on changing it every so often. Like the Akron Rubber Ducks. Before that they were the Aeros, but that only goes back to 1997. Before that they were the Canton-Akron Indians. Perhaps "Aeros" has some other history I'm not aware of.


                            *Bull Durham is about minor league baseball right before it started to boom as a commercial enterprise in the early 90s. As one can see from that film, it was a really low-budget, low-attendance, amateur-run operation in most places. That film's portrayal of the anxieties and dreams of minor leaguers is still very accurate, as far as I know, but the facilities are generally better and the presentation is more professional, for better and worse. Most of the film was shot in the old Durham Bulls stadium that was, as I recall, a public works project in the recession. The current Durham Bull stadium is a newer one they built when the Bulls became a AAA team - an expansion team in the IL for the Rays - and the Carolina League franchise of the Braves moved to Myrtle Beach. The interest in the Bulls created by the film is one of the main reasons they were able to make that jump.
                            Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 19-09-2018, 18:22.

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                              Neither do I. Especially for baseball.

                              The current ownership is really trying to make it work in Oakland, though.

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                                The Orioles wore braille on their uni's last night.


                                Aside from sarcastic comments about the team's performance, it's graphically arresting but odd as braille essentially reads by touch of course. Can a sighted person even read braille visually? I should know that but don't. I'd assume it's possible but I'm really not sure.

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                                  Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                  Neither do I. Especially for baseball.

                                  The current ownership is really trying to make it work in Oakland, though.
                                  I got the idea that the Raiders moving would help the A's. It clarified what the options were and, I suppose, made the politicians more motivated to get something done because nobody would want to have losing both teams on "their record."

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                                    Amor, it is possible, but requires quite a bit of study and a mind that does well with visual patterns.

                                    HP, that dynamic is definitely present (especially as you need to add the Warriors), but there are still a lot of challenges to be overcome.

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                                      I think Vegas is more likely to get an NBA team than an MLB team.

                                      (Second in line after Seattle, I've heard.)

                                      Oh, and I am fairly happy that the A's minor league team are coming to Summerlin so I don't have to give any more money (such as it was) to the Mets organisation.

                                      And double-oh, 95% of Summerlin (the district) is owned by Howard Hughes inc.

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                                        I don't think the A's have any intention of moving to Vegas. Vegas is not big enough as an MLB market, and it gets worse when you consider how many local yokels come from somewhere else and work at night for relatively low pay at one of the casinos.

                                        The Golden Knights did fantastic, but filling 18,000 seats is a much smaller challenge and they just had the greatest first year any expansion team has ever had. I have my concerns once the Vegas novelty wears off and the team stinks.

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                                          TV cable deals are important to baseball and Vegas is a marginal TV market - ranked 40th in the US and there's not many more people in the larger region they might exploit. Cincinnati, for example, is the #36 market but they pull from Columbus, Louisville, and Indianapolis. Las Vegas doesn't have those opportunities. It's mostly desert.

                                          Hockey is mostly about filling seats and Vegas has shown that there are a lot of permanent residents hungry for something to call their own, but TV helps, so I'm not sure how that's going to work out for Vegas. They also have the benefit of being the only major-league team in that city. Once the Raiders are there and the inevitable NBA team arrives, they might not do as well.

                                          Montreal is the best currently unserved market for baseball. It may be the only option, really, unless they find a way to expand into Mexico. Or Havana.

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                                            What about those cities with an NFL team but no major league baseball like Nashville, Charlotte or Buffalo? And how does somewhere like Portland rank when these expansions or moves are thought about?

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                                              Those are all possible - probably not Buffalo - but they’re relatively small markets. Smaller than Montreal.

                                              The NFL is different because teams only play eight to ten home games a year and they’re mostly on the weekend, so fans may drive hours to the game and then tailgate for hours before and after. That’s not really an impediment to attendance. And, increasingly, the NFL doesn’t care about selling a lot of regular tickets if they can sell a lot of very expensive club seats and luxury box leases.

                                              The other major sports are relying mostly on people who will come to the game after work, often on public transit. So the total population of the metro area is important, but so is the accessibility of the location. Putting the stadium close to the center of the city is helpful. Some NFL stadiums are centrally located, but apparently hat doesn’t matter much in the NFL.

                                              MLB and the NHL are much more reliant on local or regional TV money than their national packages, whereas the NFL is all about the national (and maybe international) TV money. Building a loyal local or regional fanbase isn’t as important to them economically.
                                              Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 21-09-2018, 21:36.

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                                                Portland gets mentioned a good deal, in part because of its size (25th largest tv market), location and relative affluence and partly because it was a successful Pacific Coast League city for decades, but the Beavers (the PCL team) gave up the ghost years ago and there is little to no local interest in funding a new ballpark (generally considered a necessary condition for any expansion club). Charlotte is larger and has an attractive corporate base, but doesn't have the deep baseball tradition (along with most of the South); Nashville is smaller and has many of the drawbacks of Charlotte without the advantages.

                                                It has been twenty years since the last expansion (Tampa Bay and Arizona), and Montreal is the only franchise to have re-located since 1972. One of the reasons for that is that there are no "obvious" markets actively looking for teams. Even the once "obvious" option of a third team in the New York metropolitan area (blocked on multiple occasions by the incumbents' evocation of their territorial rights) isn't considered anywhere near as much of a sure thing as it was say in the 80s or 90s.

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                                                  I am surprised that there's not more of a call for Sunbelt expansion. After Charlotte, Nashville and Jacksonville all got NFL teams (with differing levels of success, admittedly), it feels natural.

                                                  I guess it makes sense to not go to those particular markets and flood them, but why not have, say, a Memphis or an Austin/San Antonio MLB team?

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                                                    Look at Tampa and Miami (and to a lesser extent Arizona).

                                                    Reed is absolutely correct that the economics of NFL and MLB teams are very, very different.

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