MLB flexes its muscle, re-envisions its farm system with sweeping changes across the minors

While the rollout, notably, did not include a statement from MLB — each big league team was left to announce its own new affiliations — it demonstrated, in some cases painfully, the power MLB obtained this year by wresting control of its farm system from Minor League Baseball.

Under the new system, each big league franchise will have four affiliates — one in both Class AAA and Class AA and two in Class A — and continue to run developmental teams out of their spring training and international sites. The affiliations were configured to streamline geographical footprints — with the Washington Nationals’ Class AAA affiliate, for example, shifting from Fresno, Calif., to Rochester, N.Y.

“The initial contraction proposal [from MLB] was 14 months ago. So it’s good to have some closure moving forward,” said Dave Ziedelis, general manager of the Frederick (Md.) Keys, who, after 31 years as a Baltimore Orioles affiliate, were left off the list of 120 and will join the MLB Draft League starting in 2021. “Now we know what the structure will be. … There is some sense of relief.”

Like all affiliated minor league teams, whose 2020 seasons were canceled by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Keys suffered major economic losses this year. And Ziedelis painted the Keys’ downgrade to a collegiate league — featuring top draft-eligible prospects, with a 68-game schedule confined to the late spring and summer months — as a positive development.

“That 34-game home schedule is the sweet spot for us — it’s summer, school is out, the weather is good,” Ziedelis said in a telephone interview. “In the past, our players came from the Orioles. Now our players will be pre-draft college players, who will wind up playing for various major league organizations. … The feedback we’re getting from fans and sponsors is tremendous. Everyone’s excited. Life is a journey, and this is the next chapter in the journey.”

Elsewhere, however, the news didn’t land so gently.

For every St. Paul (Minn.) Saints — a longtime independent league favorite that will begin play in 2021 as the Minnesota Twins’ Class AAA affiliate — there was a Salem-Keizer (Ore.) Volcanoes, formerly a Class A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, who found out via social media of their exclusion from MLB’s new affiliation list.

“For a partnership of 26 years to end that way feels like a slap in the face,” Volcanoes CEO Mickey Walker told the San Francisco Chronicle after learning in a tweet from the Giants that the team did not make the cut. “That’s the toughest part to deal with. I think heartbreak is an appropriate term.”

Short-season leagues, such as the New York-Penn League, and rookie-level leagues, such as the Appalachian League, were eliminated altogether — although some of their former members made Wednesday’s cut. Among them was the Aberdeen (Md.) IronBirds, owned by Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. The IronBirds will remain an Orioles affiliate but make the jump from short-season Class A to high Class A.

The Appalachian League, meanwhile, has announced plans to continue as an MLB-backed collegiate summer league.

The Hagerstown (Md.) Suns, the Nationals’ low Class A affiliate from 2007 to 2020, were also shut out of the newly configured list of affiliated teams and have not made public their intentions. The MLB Draft League, however, has room to expand by two teams, for a total of eight, and it is possible Hagerstown could be added.

Another jilted team, the Staten Island (N.Y.) Yankees, formerly the New York-Penn League affiliate of the New York Yankees, found out last month its affiliation was being terminated in the reorganization and last week filed suit against MLB and the Yankees.

In some cases, even the teams that received official invitations Wednesday expressed some reservations until the details of the player-development contracts that will govern the economic relationship between the MLB franchises and the affiliates can be sorted through — a process that could take weeks. One person familiar with those details said Wednesday he expects some “long and difficult” negotiations ahead.

“We have a great relationship with the Mariners, and look forward to continuing the relationship,” the Tacoma (Wash.) Rainiers said in a statement after receiving word they had been invited to continue as the Seattle Mariners’ Class AAA affiliate. “But, we just received, this morning, an outline of the proposed deal and structure of the new relationship with Major League Baseball, and cannot accept the invitation until we’ve had time to review the deal that will govern our sport, and this relationship, for decades to come.”

Wednesday’s original list of affiliates contained only 119 teams instead of 120 — because one remained unresolved. MLB had offered the Fresno Grizzlies, formerly the Nationals’ Class AAA affiliate, a slot as the Colorado Rockies’ low Class A team. But Fresno initially balked.

MLB’s stance with Fresno, according to one person familiar with the talks, amounted to an ultimatum: take the downgrade or you’re out. After Wednesday, it was clear there was no shortage of suddenly unaffiliated teams to take the team’s place.

The message, evidently, got through: By late Wednesday afternoon, city officials in Fresno had called a news conference to announce the team was taking the deal.