Baseball minor-league affiliates scout new homes

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Baseball minor-league affiliates scout new homes

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

By Russell Adams, The Wall Street Journal

Go just about anywhere in the former coal-mining towns of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in eastern Pennsylvania, and someone will be talking about it. A priest referenced it at a morning Mass on Sunday, and a judge stopped the county commissioner in the street to ask for an update.

After 18 seasons, the Philadelphia Phillies and their top minor-league baseball club, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons, are severing ties. But what has everybody here talking is the hot pursuit of a new tenant for Lackawanna County Stadium. The county is talking with the New York Mets and the New York Yankees, both of whom passed through town Tuesday. The sales pitch by Lackawanna County officials includes a tour of the stadium's new $3.2. million clubhouse, an offer to replace the artificial turf with real grass and a promise to bring in a new group to manage the franchise. A decision is expected this week.

What's unfolding in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre is part of a bigger shake-up in baseball. Five major-league teams -- the Phillies, Mets, Yankees, Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals -- are scouting new homes for their Triple-A clubs. While there is some degree of reshuffling in minor-league baseball every couple of years, the current round of remapping is part of a broader shift in the relationship between the major and minor leagues.

Minor-league baseball has been one of the feel-good stories of sports in recent years. Attendance has taken off, thanks to affordable ticket prices, more intimate stadiums and a carnival atmosphere at the games. Minor-league baseball also has been a big moneymaker for team owners, whose growing success has allowed them to gain more independence from the major-league clubs. At this point, the big-league teams supply only the players and coaches -- the minor-league owners take care of the rest, from marketing to maintenance.

Now, a number of major-league teams are hoping to consolidate their baseball operations -- including their handful of minor-league teams -- in closer proximity to the city where the major-league team is based. The idea is that that will it easier both to move players up and down between the majors and minors, and that it will help build fans' interest by exposing them to players earlier in their careers.

"A lot of teams have gone in that direction," says Jeff Luhnow, vice president of player procurement for the St. Louis Cardinals. Mr. Luhnow says "clustering" minor-league affiliates is not only "a good way to build up the regional fan base," but also allows major-league executives to spend more time with their player prospects.

Other factors have also helped to weaken the ties that used to bind minor and major leagues. They include a minor-league-stadium building boom that has caused major-league clubs to pay more attention to the quality of the facilities.

Since Sept. 16, when teams were free to negotiate new affiliate agreements, many of these minor-league towns have begun aggressively wooing potential major-league partners.

The Phillies will be moving their Triple-A team to Allentown, Pa. (after a two-year stop in Ottawa, Canada), which is not only closer to Philadelphia but also has offered to build the team a new stadium. The Yankees' decision to scout other possible places for their Triple-A team effectively puts Columbus, Ohio, where the team has been based for 28 years, back in play -- which is why the Mets, whose Triple-A team has been based in Norfolk, Va., is reportedly looking at Columbus as well as Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. The Orioles and Nationals, meanwhile, are in talks with Norfolk, which is in those teams TV markets. And if the Nationals switch their affiliation closer to home, that will leave New Orleans looking for a major-league organization.

As major-league clubs have come to rely more on team-owned television networks and the revenue they generate, they've also realized it pays to have their minor-league clubs within the areas those networks reach. That's another big reason why the Orioles and Nationals are aggressively pursuing Norfolk, the Mets and Yankees are considering Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and the Phillies will relocate their Triple-A operation to Allentown.

The relationship between Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and the Phillies crumbled because of everything from the county's delay in modernizing the baseball facilities to a feeling by the local fans that they've been snubbed by the big-league team. County officials make no secret of their preference for the Yankees, which they view as a vehicle to tell the world they've graduated from coal-scarred town to a miniature big city with a thriving service-based economy and a blossoming cultural scene.(THE YANKEES') The Yankees'"association will get us one step closer to letting the rest of the world know," says Robert Cordaro, a member of the board of commissioners in Lackawanna County, which owns and operates the Red Barons.

As a whole, minor-league baseball continues to draw large crowds, bringing in a record 41.7 million fans this past season. But interest has waned in a number of cities, as fans have become disenchanted with teams. The Ottawa Lynx, the Baltimore Orioles affiliate, which broke International League attendance records in 1993, this year finished last in the league in attendance. Attendance for the Columbus Clippers, the Yankees' Triple-A team, has been on the decline recently as fans have grown increasingly frustrated with the team's poor performance. In Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, where the Red Barons at one time drew 12,000 people to a stadium with fewer than 11,000 seats, the club drew only about 3,000 fans a game for two recent playoff games.

Minor-league and major-league teams are bound together by so-called player-development contracts, which typically run in two-year cycles. So every couple of years, teams are free to change affiliations. Sometimes the major-league club initiates the switch, while other times the minor-league team takes the lead. All the minor-league teams -- not just Triple A but other levels as well -- have a contract with the league that guarantees the owners the right to have a team. The cities hosting the team are at the mercy of the minor-league owners, who may decide to move or sell a team.

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and the Phillies were once a perfect match. Fans packed the stadium and developed a kinship with former Phillies stars like Darren Daulton, who passed through before leading the team to a World Series appearance in 1993. But the team came to be a financial drain on county coffers, accumulating some $10 million in losses (including bond payments on the stadium) over the last six or seven years, according to Mr. Cordaro. Meantime, the Phillies became increasingly dissatisfied with the county's inability to upgrade the facilities, while fans grew tired of watching a losing team.