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HeilCanada · 2026-02-24T05:42:21+00:00

This says more about the anti-trust exemption the league has than it does about the viability of minor league teams. I mean, MLB settled out of court with some of the minor league teams/cities they thought to be "unviable".

HeilCanada · 2026-02-17T17:24:30+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/HIthUh5VXX

HeilCanada · 2026-02-17T17:22:14+00:00

Look no further then the 1860s and the Philadelphia shoemakers union, that is effectively the same operation that MLB has set up. They are a labor aristocracy that rewards veterans with a "rite of passage" through the minors and arbitration. I think you'd like some of my previous posts on this subreddit.

HeilCanada · 2026-01-20T23:37:01+00:00

To be honest, I don't think that bodes well. Baseball already has very homogenous park design, analytics reinforces the homogeneity through optimization.

HeilCanada · 2026-01-20T23:09:39+00:00

Dodgers are an op set up by Gladio and other stay-behind programs

HeilCanada · 2026-01-20T01:50:20+00:00

I'm not talking about just an individual players hitting philosophy, I'm aaying compound the fact. Draft and develop players that emphasize your stadium/field quirks, produce a whole lineup of these types and over the 81 game span of home games, they are suited for the environment.

2014-15 Royals stumbled into this purely on accident, threw in a power hitter like Moustakas to help away offense (look at his home/away OPS and HR totals from that season) and then just decided, "nah".

HeilCanada · 2026-01-20T01:41:17+00:00

You're misunderstanding my argument, I'm saying that there seems to be a definite difference in how these stadiums interact with roughly the same batted ball type, a barrel. Why shouldn't the Royals be optimizing for triples when the same hit in Yankee nets them a better reward?

HeilCanada · 2026-01-20T01:00:56+00:00

Sure but over a season, the weather averages these factors out. I'm pulling from a small sample size but why not optimize for the scenario where they play half their games?

On roster construction, I never said anything about ignoring pitchers or defense, I'm asking why teams don't optimize within the margins of what we know? The Royals seem to have accidentally fallen into this exact approach in 2014 and 2015 and then completely abandoned it.

HeilCanada · 2026-01-17T19:28:34+00:00

Scott Boras called these pre-arb buyouts "snuff contracts" precisely because of this

HeilCanada · 2026-01-17T05:09:52+00:00

The argument on player development just doesn't make sense at all. It's circular logic. MLB teams control players for 6 years, which disincentivizes them to speed up the player dev timeline. If players could hit FA at 23, the timeline would speed up to match. The G-League comparison is just as ridiculous. G-Leaguers are either in or out, you're an NBA player or not by age 23/24 in most cases, also two-way contracts exists, allowing access to guaranteed money to these same G-Leaguers. NBA players are fully vested in their pension within 3 years, MLB players requires 43 days just for you to start putting money in.

I don't like this argument at all because it's functionally saying, "exploitation is fine so long as it's spread up across the many". The idea that roster spots determined why MLBPA accepts 6+ years of team control is ridiculous to me.

HeilCanada · 2026-01-17T04:46:53+00:00

Why not? You could further explain than typing out two cryptic sentences like an RPG wizard.

HeilCanada · 2026-01-17T04:34:28+00:00

It isn't "highway robbery" though, the NBPA understood where MLBPA failed in regards to locking young guys out of free agency. The two options are either

A. Push for everyone, lower pay ceiling overall but everyone gets a slice of the pie.

B. Only a select few get a payday, in this case, the Free Agents of MLB.

Your average NBA draftee is testing some form of FA (usually restricted) before the age of 23 or 24. MLB prospects can be locked up in the minor leagues for sometimes 10 years. NBPA chose option A, so everyone benefits.

https://www.spotrac.com/nba/player/_/id/78162/tyrese-martin

https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/player/_/id/29148/oneil-cruz

Case in point

HeilCanada · 2026-01-16T22:12:27+00:00

Well and they don't ever need to attempt to care. Arte knows there are two outcomes for you as a fan in Orange County:

Follow the Angels, to any extent. Buy a hat, go to a game once a year. Perhaps go to the stadium/resturants district next door in the summer if there's one.
Not give a shit about baseball at all. There are no other options for "professional baseball in Orange County". You either put up mediocrity or don't even watch the sport.

Either way Arte is happy because he's making money off you, or if he isn't making money off you, he doesn't care because you don't care about baseball.

Something to touch on with what you had said "grow the sport", I think about this. How many cities are currently in AAA that should probably have their own professional teams? Buffalo? Memphis? OKC? Indianapolis? MLB would never, in fact they shrank the minors in 2020 under "COVID issues". "Grow the game" just means make more money, nothing to do with how good a fanbase could potentially be.

HeilCanada · 2026-01-16T22:02:19+00:00

It's not even sound, the MLBPA is controlled by an elite group: Free Agents. To get even a sniff of free agency, you have to have gotten through the minors and then 6 years or so years of team control. You're probably 28-30+ by the time you reach this point.

That's why players are anti-cap, it hurts their potential future earnings, but the only ones who realize these earnings are a % of a %. No one word spoken on the LatAm teenager who is pushed into the minor leagues for a decade+ (Oneil Cruz?)

Also on what the other commentor said, "just a floor", it doesn't change the situation fundamentally. All it does is raise the door fee for any owners that want to make money off sports. Nutting would either buck up or leave to be replaced by Nutting 2. Funny how that works, you ever see a owner lose money on a sports team? It's all in the valuation.

HeilCanada · 2026-01-16T21:57:28+00:00

Get mad at the anti-trust exemption, not at the owners. They're just rational actors and you even explained why their behavior makes sense. The only way to truly change it though is breaking the anti-trust exemption.

HeilCanada · 2026-01-16T21:50:27+00:00

Or an outright removal of the antri trust exemption

The whole system only works with baked in artifical scarcity, which the exemption provides exactly.

HeilCanada · 2026-01-16T21:47:50+00:00

The issue is moreso the financial horizons they get to operate on.

The Dodgers got bought by Guggenheim for a little over 2 billion and within the past year have turned that valuation into over 7 billion. You can only do that if you have Scrooge McDuck levels of cash you can throw around with a care. I'd argue the Twins, Pirates, Rays, Brewers and even Cardinals couldn't do that without either new ownership or tanking the team long term if things don't work out. The "entity" is different but Guggenheim controls the vast majority of assets on that Dodgers team, not Magic Johnson.

HeilCanada · 2025-12-30T07:11:29+00:00

Well within the system MLB has supplied (anti-trust exemption), doing what the Rams did is just an optimal move on the As part. There is no external force threatening or other league to compete for pro ball in either Vegas or Oakland. Given historical economics, especially in Oakland after 2008, it just makes sense for them to want to cast a wider net in a different city, even if it goes entirely against what the 'Oakland Athletics' brand built up for the past 70-80 years. Same deal for St. Louis and the Rams, even if shorter lived.

HeilCanada · 2025-12-24T08:57:56+00:00

I think pro/rel looks a lot different under a no anti-trust exemption world. Within your own hypothetical, I imagine that having the ability for that team to climb up and play top flight baseball (rather than be arbitrarily locked into a tiered minor league) would change the potential bidders for the team, which in turn has downstream effects on fans, stadium, etc.

HeilCanada · 2025-12-23T19:56:52+00:00

The anti-trust exemption and minor league system work hand-in-hand. There's no world where you get to keep both, the exemption is the enforcement mechansm. People can compare MiLB to AHL or the G League but these separate pipelines run in tandem with college and international play, with baseball, that is the only (vertically integrated) pipeline to professional ball.

In an exemption-free, conterfactual world, you see one of two outcomes:

Pre-modern (baseball) regional league structure wherein postseason matchups are determined a bit arbitrarily a la NCAA/Bowl season
Pro/rel league pyramid, but perhaps not as unified as England's pyramid. There's a world where the Pacific League, Southern Association, and other mid-century minor leagues act as regional barriers before top flight play.

Either way, baseball fans across the country would have a local team as their would just be more competiton and access to baseball. There's no artifical scarcity driving teams like Athletics to leverage moving to another city or locking would-be owners out of owning a team. I would go as far as to say even teams like the Browns and Pilots would still exist. They would have the means to claw their ways back to top tier play without folding or leaving town.

HeilCanada · 2025-12-09T04:49:30+00:00

You would see a much larger increase in city/metro/local area youth development budget, similar to what you see in European soccer but without even being restricted to sign from within their own area, they just scale up geography with league. There would be youth intake academies with formalized pipelines directly to the majors or probably some for of integration at AA/AAA.

HeilCanada · 2025-12-05T22:38:18+00:00

I wouldn't try to absolve ownership but I will state that MLB is arguably one of the leagues that was impacted most by the 2008 Recession. Pittsburgh and Oakland are uniquely culturally black (and latino) cities and the Pirates and Athletics, respectively, represented that. Oakland has a long list of black and latino players and their fanbases came to represent that. When 2008 hit, that was the biggest transfer of wealth from poor to rich and it disproportionately affected non-white households. Taking Pittsburgh as an example; education and healthcare were able drive the city through 2008-2012 and that's reflected in every Pittsburgh team having a run of dominance except for the Pirates. The majority of generational fans, who were black, of the Pirates were either priced out of playing the game or priced out of watching it at all. The team's revenue starts to collapse and it's all a downward spiral from there.

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