Column: Hoping the Pioneer’s days aren’t numbered
Not that long ago, and a few months before I started working at the Daily Inter Lake, I freelanced a story for MiLB.com on Avery Weems, a sixth-round pick of the Chicago White Sox.
He was a surprise sixth-round pick, or at least it was a surprise to him: He hadn’t shown enough to be drafted before and his senior season of college, and then struggled to a 7.15 earned-run average that spring at Arizona.
But a scout liked him, and he was drafted, and the next thing we knew he was a shut-down lefty in the Pioneer League for the Great Falls Voyagers.
The college struggles were far away.
“You know, I’m here now and I’m enjoying it,” he said. “It’s a great experience and not a lot of
people get to play baseball and live out their dream.”
Fewer will get that now, and if Weems was a year younger I wonder where he’d end up. One of the wood-bat amateur leagues that Major League Baseball seems to suddenly prefer, maybe. Or perhaps the spanking new so-called “Draft League,” in which college players pay their own way ahead of MLB’s first-year player draft – which has now been moved back a month to July 11.
As a rally-killing double-play of a year we call 2020 winds down, I marvel at MLB’s timing. By eliminating 40 minor league teams the majors has put itself in line for a lot more free labor – not that minor league labor was costing all that much.
An excellent article by Neil Demause for Defector.com points out that this contraction will save MLB ball clubs collectively about $9 million. That’s about one Lance Lynn – who by the way was traded to the White Sox in a package that included Weems – or half a Dallas Keuchel.
The moves should also put MLB dangerously close to losing its antitrust exemption, but of course in this wild-pitch-to-the-cup of a year, congress has had bigger fish to fry.
There was a sternly-worded letter when MLB announced it planned to contract 40 minor league teams, signed by 106 members of congress. And then not much noise at all.
It’s a bummer. The Missoula Paddleheads, nee Osprey, will no longer be affiliated with the Arizona Diamondbacks. So if you’re inclined to drive two hours to their picturesque park, you have less of a chance to see the next Carlos Gonzalez or Paul Goldschmidt at Ogren-Allegiance Field.
Demause points out that this kind of minors shakeup hasn’t happened since the 1930s when Branch Rickey – years before he elevated Jackie Robinson to the majors – got in trouble for having too many minor league teams while with the St. Louis Cardinals, violating antitrust laws.
A look at the Cardinals’ minor league affiliates in 1938 shows 27 teams. On one of those, the Midland Cardinals, a pitcher named Cliff Neighbors went 6-6.
He didn’t pass much thunder on to me by the way.
Midland was one of over a dozen Class D teams for the Cards; St. Louis had two AA teams, when AA was the highest classification before the majors.
Those AA teams became AAA in 1946; the minor leagues as they look now – or should look now -- came to be in 1963. Numbers dictated that Cliff Neighbor had little chance of making the majors; now the lack of numbers, four affiliated teams per MLB franchise, might do the same.
Missoula and Great Falls and the rest of the Pioneer League is now a “Partner League,” getting a little seed money from MLB in 2021 but who knows what after that. Boise is the newest member of the Pioneer and allegedly lost its affiliation – and spot in the Northwest League – because of its run-down, 31-year-old, recently-upgraded stadium.
Welcome, Boise Hawks. This new league has seen franchises move from Medicine Hat, Lethbridge (to Missoula), Helena, Butte, Provo, Casper and Orem (just this year, to Windsor, Colorado) in my professional life. It has remained a great league despite the movement, but now its teams need to draw enough fans and sell enough overpriced barley pop to break even… but welcome.
I hope we all get to hang out a while, but I’m not very confident.
Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 758-4463 or fneighbor@dailyinterlake.com.