Does it matter much if a minor-league team wins many games? It seems that thei main focus would be player development. Does a winning record mean anything?
Post season playoffs matter for both development and making money since it’s the chance to play more games for the teams that qualify.
To the extent that attendance in a given market is affected by being competitive that affects the financial side of what is still a business.
I would think the two go hand-in-hand. If you can develop better players you’ll win more games. To put it another way a AAA team will win more games if that team is made up of players that are almost-but-not-quite ready for the major leagues.
Affiliated minor league baseball (the farm clubs for the major league teams) is a very strange system in which the players are all employees and paid by the major league team, and then assigned to a certain level in the minor league system. The owners of affiliated minor league teams pay for travel and the club and stadium operations.
Minor league owners very much want to have a successful team, because that can obviously increase ticket sales and profits. However, they have no control over the most important factor in determining a successful team - the talent of the players. In fact, truly successful players will be taken away and moved up in the system to the detriment of the minor league club.
The one thing a minor league club can do to improve their talent situation is to seek out an affiliation deal with a different MLB club. Otherwise, all they can do to get fans in the door is to provide a good stadium experience. Sometimes a club will stack a minor league team with a few top prospects to see how they play together, but more often each individual player is on their own development track.
As far as the parent clubs are concerned, it is all about player development. I recently read some comments by a recently retired minor league player who quit in part when he realized that he and the vast majority of the other players in the entire minor league baseball system were really only there to provide an acceptable level of competition to develop the real prospects. Sure, a handful of lower round draft picks and free agents will make their way to the Majors, but the vast majority are just there because you need 25 players on a team.
Having a good team is one factor that brings out fans, but being in the playoffs may not make a difference financially.
Last September the Columbus Clippers (AAA, IL) drew so few fans for the Governor’s Cup semifinals against Norfolk (2500 for one game) that the team decided to make tickets free for at least a couple of games (including the finals against Indianapolis), just to put fans in the stands.
I look at minor league games as a chance to see generally high-quality baseball for not too exorbitant a price, not requiring a load of star power or continual success in winning games to convince me to go. I was disappointed not to get a chance to see Mookie Betts and Christian Vasquez play for Portland (AA) when I was last there (they had just been promoted), but it didn’t seriously affect my enjoyment of the game.*
*our seats were very close to the on-deck hitters’ circle and there were back-and-forth conversations with the players.
Well yeah… even if ALL of them were legitimate prospects at the beginning, there’s a very limited number of major league slots, so at some point, the rest of the players end up being essentially sparring partners / practice squad players whether it’s helpful to their egos or not.
That’s true at all levels of sports- only a handful at each level make it to the next one. At least they’re paying the minor leaguers; in most sports, the high level amateurs fill that role.
Long-term minor leaguers usually keep at it because the love playing baseball. At a certain point, they knew that playing in the majors is a long shot. If that’s an issue, they quit (or are released). If they keep at it, it may be as a long shot, or the possibility of hanging on as a coach and making the majors that way.
It’s still a business. You have to attract and keep a fan base. If it was obviously about development and mechanics to the exclusion of wanting to win, fans might not show up.
You are right, minor league teams do have to attract a fan base, but it is done with a lot of marketing, and mascots taking pictures with kids, and between inning contests and tons of other promotions.
I attend several Pawtucket Red Sox games a year, the AAA team for Boston. They have a major selling point of being the top farm club for the local major league team - only 45 miles away. One of their selling points is “see tomorrow’s stars today.”
Just last year, the wife of the long time owner sold off to a new group, which includes a few of the owners of the Boston Red Sox. Their first move was to push for a brand new stadium in Providence - paid for mostly with public funds. (it got shot down) They were looking for a better location, better facilities, and possible ancillary deals for parking and restaurants because that is how they actually make money. Since they have no control over the product on the field, they need to change the packaging.
AFAICT, the minors are largely a farm system for pitchers. When I look at minor league rosters, I see a lot of pitchers. If the vast majority of players in the minor league are there to provide an acceptable level of competition for the “real” prospects" then why so many pitchers?
Don’t get me wrong, minor league players frequently make less than minimum wage which might be OK when you are 21 or 22 but you can’t support a family so there is a natural expiration date on players who don’t make it by the time they are in their mid 20’s.
I don’t know if the farm system would break down if they had to pay their minor league players more but the way the sport is going, I don’t see more money flooding into the game unless Cuba changes the equation.
I’m a Durham Bulls season ticket holder and apparently the issue with playoff attendance is true for most team.
I found this quote in an article from a few years ago which was reporting on why the Bulls would sell out the last few games of the season but then have tiny crowds for the playoffs…
The rosters at every level of baseball have a lot of pitchers.
A typical Major League 25 man roster has 12 pitchers, two catchers, and 11 “position players”.
Looking at the current Durham Bulls AAA roster that’s pretty much exactly what they have too with 13 pitchers, 2 catchers, and 10 “position players”
Having been a AAA fan the last few years I’ve come to learn a lot more about the way Major League rosters work than I ever did when I was just a Major League fan.
Each Major League team has a 40 man roster consisting of, you guessed it, 40 players. Of those 40 players only 25 are on the Active roster and can be used in games by the Major League team. The other 15 are mostly on the affiliated AAA team with a couple in lower leagues. The importance of the players on the 40 man roster is that the parent club is allowed to freely move players on the 40 man roster into and out of the 25 man roster as long as they don’t exceed the 25 man limit. For example if a player from the 25 man roster is injured and goes on the disabled list a player from the 40 man roster in AAA can be added to the 25 man roster.
As a minor league season ticket holder I keep a close eye on which players on my team are on the parent club’s 40 man roster and which ones aren’t. The players on the 40 man roster will appear and disappear from game to game as the parent club has injuries and needs to call players up.
Unfortunately that often means one of our starters gets called up to the majors and sits on the bench for a week there before being sent back and even when they do come back they need a few games to get their timing back because they haven’t been playing every game.
Luckily there always seem to be a few players who aren’t on the 40 man roster but still play pretty much every game. These tend to be our favorites that we pick to root for that year.
Beyond simply setting the roster, however, the manager of the minor league team is also hired by the parent club and follows instructions he receives. A couple years I was at a game where our starting pitcher threw a no hitter for 8 1/3 innings. At that point he was removed from the game because he had thrown the maximum number of pitches the parent club allowed him to throw and when interviewed after the game the manager said that was the loudest he’d ever been booed but if he had let the starter stay in he would have been fired before he could get back to the locker room. Luckily the closer came in and finished off the no hitter.
Correct, most baseball teams are either just above or below 50% pitchers - 12 or 13 pitchers out of 25 players. Class A and below teams usually have 35 players on the team, but only 25 active players for any game.
One of the other issues in minor league baseball is not just the low pay, but the financial divide between the prospects and the scrubs. Most teams have about 225 minor league players under their control. Salaries for most of those players range from $1150 to $2700 a month. 15 of the players in the minors are on the major league team’s official 40 man roster, and those guys made either $41,000 or $82,000 a year last year depending on if they were in their first or second year on the 40 man.
However, scattered among the minors at all different levels are the top draft picks from each year’s draft, who all get a signing bonus on top of their salary. As you can see from the list from last year, everyone through pick 55 got at least $1 million, the highest being $6.5 million. As you may imagine, teams pay more attention to the players they have made such a significant investment in.
http://m.mlb.com/news/article/130246508/2015-draft-signing-and-bonus-tracker
But to get back to the main point of this thread, while all teams want to win, MLB teams are far more concerned with the development of individual players than if their AAA makes the playoffs.
After all the discussion of limitations put on the AAA clubs, I should say that every AAA team takes winning seriously and gets genuinely excited about winning their league championship. It may not be important to the parent club, but when you watch them play it’s obviously important to the players and coaches at the AAA level.
The failure to provide AAA teams with winning clubs is one reason you’ll see teams switch major league affiliates; they do get tired of a raw deal, and can be pried away from one MLB club by a sweeter deal from another promised better teams.
MLB teams will also make an effort to have their AAA affiliates staffed with at least a few veterans who aren’t prospects but at least help the AAA team win. This generally doesn’t have to cause a problem; a team usually has more roster spots to fill at AA and AAA than it has legitimate prospects.
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I don’t know if the farm system would break down if they had to pay their minor league players more but the way the sport is going, I don’t see more money flooding into the game unless Cuba changes the equation.
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They’ll never have to pay more. Pro sports is like any other entertainment business; people are willing to work for peanuts for the promise of stardom and a huge payday.
Two things come to mind that have not been mentioned:
First, sometimes the MLB club likes to keep a group of players together and develop them in a winning environment together, so they’ll do things like hold off promoting a prospect until after the league playoffs are done. Winning minor league teams & systems are often an indicator of a major league team on the rise - though as others point out, winning is secondary to developing the players.
Second, AAA is often not where the best prospects are. Lots of top prospects jump from AA to the majors directly, and a lot more jump up to AAA for only a short period for a sort of final proving grounds before going to the majors. AAA rosters often are the “extra bench” insurance for the MLB team (as Pixel Dent points out), with major league veterans on minor league contracts hoping to get one last shot, and older minor league vets hoping to get called up.
While players do sometimes jump from AA up, this is not exactly “often” true. It’s the exception. Even the very good players usually play in AAA.
While the AAA club provides some space for extra bench players, the rule are structured to prevent teams from doing this a lot. The 40-man-roster rule limits the number of players who can be called up at all, and movement up and down is restricted by options and time limits on demotions (a player sent to AAA must remain there for ten days, etc. etc.)