Baseball Shakes Up the AAA Lineup

The baseball season is over at the minor league level and it's time for the annual game of musical chairs. Every year at this time, teams change their major league affiliations. Usually, a couple of lower level teams change affiliations and maybe one or two AAA teams. This year, however, wholesale change is taking place at the highest level of minor league ball. Five teams are changing their affiliations, including such longstanding relationships as the Yankees and Columbus and the Phillies and Wilkes-Barre Scranton. What is driving this sudden shake-up? Money, what else?

Attendance has been soaring in the minors over the last several years and teams have been generating great cash flow for their owners. That cash flow has allowed them to achieve a greater degree of independence from their MLB overlords than ever before. In addition, the minor league owners have taken cues from their major league counterparts and have engaged in a burst of stadium building. Well, they have convinced the cities they play in to build stadia for them, that is. And if those cities won't build stadiums, then those minor league teams are just as quick as their major league counterparts to threaten, or in many cases, carry out the threats, to pack up and move to a city that will.

Witness the case of the Phillies top farm club which is decamping to Allentown after 18 years in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Now, the team didn't leave Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, just the affiliation with the Phillies. The city will continue to have a franchise, in fact the Yankees will be moving over from Columbus after spending 28 years in Ohio. No, the Phillies top farm team will be spending a lame duck year in Ottawa while the city of Allentown constructs a new stadium. The team will move there for the 2008 season. The ripple effect sees the Nationals move to Columbus while the Mets terminated their affiliation with Norfolk and moved to New Orleans. Baltimore moved from Ottawa to Norfolk.

So, aside from the termination of decades old relationships, what is to be made of all of this? The Yankees, Phillies, Orioles and Nationals all end up with affiliations that are geographically closer and, with the exception of the Nationals, in their natural fan base. The Mets appear to be the big loser. They wanted to stay with Norfolk but the Tides wanted Baltimore. By being stuck in New Orleans, the Mets are now in the Pacific Coast League with games on the west coast forcing them to bring players cross country at times for call-ups. New Orleans is hardly within the Mets natural fan base and the Zephyrs are not that strong a fan supported team anyway.