Follow the money

A few notes about baseball finances, particularly as it pertains to the minor leagues:

This week a pair of congressfolk, one a Republican and one a Democrat, introduced legislation grandly entitled Save America’s Pastime that would preempt a lawsuit in California that argues that minor league players are paid less than minimum wage.

The news release announcing the legislation implies -- falsely -- that minor league teams bear the burden of player salaries. They don't; it's the major league organizations. And the bill was so roundly mocked on Twitter by people who actually understand the economics of baseball that the sponsoring Democrat abandoned the legislation the next day.

After her defection, MLB (which had been hiding behind MiLB) put out a statement defending the paltry pay most minor leaguers receive as proper for "short-term seasonal apprentices." This hardly quells the critics:

I can't wait to get started on the 2017 Baseball America Short-Term Seasonal Apprentice Handbook.

— Ben Badler (@BenBadler) June 30, 2016

That "short term seasonal apprenticeship" you know, where a team owns you for six years and can pay you below the min wage the entire time.

— CJ Nitkowski (@CJNitkowski) June 30, 2016

I've never attended an MLB draft pick's signing when a team mentions a kid starting his "short-term seasonal apprenticeship" in the minors.

— Jose de Jesus Ortiz (@OrtizKicks) June 30, 2016

I wonder if anyone will break Mike Hessman's all time short-term seasonal apprenticeship home run record that took him 19 years to set...

— Todd Van Steensel (@toddvs35) June 30, 2016

---

Major League Baseball on Thursday sold a chunk of MLB Advanced Media (specifically its web streaming operation) to Disney -- which also owns ESPN -- for $3.5 billion, and Disney also gets an option to buy the majority of Bam Tech. I won't pretend to understand what this means for us fans, other than knowing that it's added evidence that Disney/ESPN is worried about the slippage of its business model (as it should be). But even divvied up among the 30 teams, $3.5 billion is a pretty sizable windfall.

And yet the commissioner's office goes into convulsions at the thought of a Class A player having a livable income.

---

The Twins switched their Double A affiliation a couple of winters ago from New Britain (Conn.) in the Eastern League to Chattanooga in the Southern League. At about the same time, the New Britain club announced it was moving operations to a as-yet unbuilt park in neighboring Hartford and rebranding as the "Hartford YardGoats."

The stadium project has been a complete mess, and work on the stadium was halted about a month ago as the city and the contractor fought over responsibility for the fiasco. It appears that the YardGoats won't actually play a game in Hartford all season. Meanwhile, the city is spending more than $6,000 a day to post a fire department detail on the unfinished stadium to make sure it doesn't burn down (it lacks a working sprinkler system).

The Twins got out of that on just in time.

Chattanooga choo-choo

Ever have the feeling you were
being watched?

The Twins went back to their distant past Wednesday when they and the Chattanooga Lookouts announced a four-year affiliation deal.

No more New Britain RockCats for the Double A franchise. The Twins will have their second-highest minor league team in the Southern League again -- and in Chattanooga for the first time in more than half a century.

Back in the day -- when the Twins were still the Washington Senators, back before Calvin Griffith inherited the club from his adopted father, Clark "The Old Fox" Griffith -- the Lookouts were not only the Senators' top farm club but owned by Griffith. Indeed, for much of three decades, the Lookouts may have been the complete extent of the Senators' farm "system."

The story of Chattanooga baseball really can't be separated from that of Joe Engle, a truly fascinating obscurity in baseball history.

Engle was a Washington native who grew up a playmate of Teddy Roosevelt's kids and was batboy for the Senators, Engle pitched for the Senators for a few years in his teens and early 20s with marginal success (rooming with Walter Johnson in the process), Then he drifted into scouting for Griffith, Engle is credited with finding three Hall-of-Famers for Griffith (Goose Goslin, Joe Cronin and Bucky Harris) and landing the core of the only three pennant winning teams Washington ever boasted.

Supposedly, when Engle brought Cronin to Washington, he introduced the young shortstop to Calvin Griffith's niece by announcing:  Look, Millie, I brought you a husband, embarrassing each of the pair. But indeed, the two did marry. (Clark Griffith then traded Cronin to Boston, where the salaries were higher.)

In 1929 Griffith sent Engle to Chattanooga to run the Lookouts, There Engle remained, pretty much, for the rest of his life, essentially being a early Bill Veeck.

One of his more legendary stunts came with an 1931 exhibition game in Chattanooga with the New York Yankees, in which he had a 17-year-old lefty from Chattanooga named Jackie Mitchell pitch to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. The stunt was that Mitchell was female. She struck out both the Bambino and the Iron Horse, and nobody will ever know for sure if the whiffs were on merit or because the two all-time greats were being chivalrous and/or playing along with the gag.

Eventually Calvin Griffith succeeded Engle at the helm of the Lookouts, prepping to inherit the Washington club by running the minor league team. Chattanooga was also where a young Harmon Killebrew played his minor league ball (after stewing on the Senators bench for two years under the bonus baby rules of the time), as did Jim Kaat.

All that is part of the distant past. Now the Lookouts are part of the Twins future. Presumably the Twins cut ties to New Britain because of the messy stadium situation in central Connecticut; the team's ownership appears to have burned their bridges with New Britain. but the stadium deal with Hartford hasn't been finalized.

Jim Crikket had an interesting observation on Twitter. As part of a reshuffling of Triple A affiliations, the Oakland Athletics were displaced in Sacramento and wound up in Nashville, which is not a particularly attractive geographic fit for a California franchise. That affiliation (like the Twins renewal in Rochester) expires in two years. Crikket suggests that Nashville might be an attractive destination for the Twins' Triple A affilation after 2016; having the Triple A and Double A teams in the same state (Tennessee) could be quite handy. (UPDATE: The affiliation agreement announced Thursday between the A's and Nashville runs through 2018, so a Tennessee nexus ain't happening in two years.)

Minor (league) stuff

This is the kind of thing that happens when a farm system is loaded with talent that is truly developing: The Twins minor league affiliates— at least the full-season ones — are sporting some impressive records in 2013.

Triple A: The Rochester Red Wings (60-51) won Monday and are now in first place in the North Division of the International League. It's the weakest of the three first-place records, but the Wings are certainly surging — 19-7 in July, and they were 11 games out of first place on July 2.

Double A: The New Britain RockCats (49-59) are the exception to this brag. They were off Monday. On Sunday they broke a long losing streak that included the controversial Miguel Sano homer run pimping and benching.

High A: The Fort Myers Miracle (65-38 for the full season, 20-16 in the second half) beat former Twins pitcher Scott Baker 5-0 on Monday. (Baker's on a rehab assignment; I think it's safe to say his return from Tommy John surgery has not gone as well as he or the Cubs had hoped). Miracle manager Doug Mientkiewicz earlier this season compared his squad (which at the time included Sano and Eddie Rosario) to a Ferrari; now he has Byron Buxton on his team, and the consensus top prospect in baseball was just named player of the week in the Florida State League.

Low A: The Cedar Rapids Kernels (65-39 for full season, 25-11 in second half) have a reshuffled roster from the team I saw play back in May. No Buxton, no D.J. Hicks, no J.D Williams now — but the Kernels,who finished second in their division in the first half, now have the best overall record in the Midwest League. I expect to see them again next week, and I'll (of course) file reports.

Rookie: The Elizabethton Twins (18-19 after a loss Monday) generally dominate the Appalachian League, partly because they tend to have older players than many of their rivals. (While every franchise has one Triple A, Double A, high A and low A affiliate, there are diverse setups in the lower levels between the short-season A leagues, the rookie leagues and the complex leagues. The Twins have no short-season A team.) In that context, records and stats lose much of their meaning, but it's safe to say that this is not one of the better collections of talent the Twins have had in E-town.

Complex: If the numbers generated by games in the Appy League mean little, multiply that for the Gulf Coast League, an assemblage of players just entering professional ball leavened with established major-leaguers beginning rehab assignments. The GCL Twins — who have had both Nick Blackburn and Kohl Stewart pitch for them — are 15-17.

Minor league park effects

 

The Twins have moved their Midwest League affiliation to
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Veterans Memorial Stadium is, according
to Baseball America, one of the better hitters' parks
in the generally pitcher-friendly Midwest League.

The Baseball America that landed in my mailbox Thursday included a two-page spread on minor league park effects. For people like me, who scan minor league stats for a rough measurement of what a given prospect can do, having a handle on park effects is important.

But with few exceptions, we haven't had a real detailed breakdown of specific parks. We know that, in general, the Pacific Coast League is more hitter-friendly than its Triple A counterpart, the International League; that in low A, the chilly Midwest League is kinder to pitchers than the warmer South Atlantic League; that the high-altitude parks in the California League inflate hitting stats.

I've noted repeatedly in the this blog that the Twins full season affiliates are, in each level, in the more pitcher-friendly league -- the International League (Triple A), the Eastern League (Double A), the Florida State League (high A), the Midwest League (low A).

These are all generalities. BA now tells us a bit more.

The BA spread tells us that the Twins' specific affiliates are generally in some of the better hitters parks in their leagues.

• Rochester is the fourth-highest run environment in the 14-team International League.
• New Britain is the fourth-highest run environment in the 12-team Eastern League.
• Fort Myers is the sixth-highest run environment in the 12-team FSL.
• Cedar Rapids is the second-highest run environment in the 16-team Midwest League.

None of them is truly extreme. They tend (Fort Myers being the exception) to tilt slightly to the hitters, but in a league environment that tilts toward the pitchers. (This will be the Twins' first season with Cedar Rapids; their previous affiliate in the MWL, Beloit, was eighth on that list.)

It's also worth noting that all four leagues are listed as having low standard deviations, meaning that there aren't huge differences between the highs and lows. When the Twins affiliates hit the road, they're playing in parks that don't play all that much differently from each other.

All this, it seems to me, indicates that the Twins full-season affiliates play in situations that make their statistics relatively reliable indicators.

Bye-bye Beloit, hello Cedar Rapids

Miguel Sano takes a rip during a May game before
a typically sparse crowd in Beloit.

The Cedar Rapids Kernels today are to announce that they have signed a four-year working agreement with the Twins, which means Minnesota's eight year attachment to Beloit in the low-A Midwest League is ended.

It was fairly obvious all year that the Twins would look for a new affiliation in the Midwest League. Beloit is said to have the worst facilities in the league, and as I noted during my visit there in May, the Snappers didn't draw. The Twins had three expiring affiliations this year, and they kept the two they wanted to retain (Rochester in Triple A, New Britain in Double A) and found an upgrade in the one they wanted to swap out.

Cedar Rapids is the closest affiliated minor league team to Mankato, so this is a welcome shift for me. I used to have an annual minor league pilgrimage to Iowa, and fell out of that habit some time ago; having a Twins affiliate in C.R. makes it very likely that I'll head that way in future summers.

Taking a quick look at the Elizabethton roster -- because the Cedar Rapids roster next year will have many of those players -- makes it all the more enticing to point the vehicle south to see some baseball next summer. Max Kepler, an outfielder with a fascinating backstory (his parents were world-class ballet artists in Berlin, and he signed with the Twins as a 16-year-old three years ago), had a wonderful season for E-town; he'll certainly move up. Byron Buxton and Jose Barrios, the Twins top two draftees last summer, ended their season with Elizabethton; I wouldn't be surprised if either opened in Cedar Rapids, and certainly expect them to get there at some point.

There will always be intriguing, and certainly unproven, talent there; that's what Low-A ball is about.

I should note here that Jim Crikket of the Knuckleballs blog, who broke the news of the Cedar Rapids affiliation agreement on Monday night, said in a comment on this blog last summer that he expected the Twins affiliation to move there. He's a Twins fan who lives in C.R., and I rather expect he'll be passing on insights to the Kernels players. One of the things I expect to do this winter when I update the siderail to this blog is create a section of blogs on the minor league system. I know Knuckleballs and Twins Fan from Afar (New Britain) will be two of them; feel free to tell me of others worth keeping track of.

Matt Carson vs. Chris Parmelee

Matt Carson hit
.277/.339/.447 for
the Red Wings.

The Twins on Wednesday returned pitchers Jeff Manship and Luis Perdomo to Triple A Rochester. Manship's spot (long relief) will be filled by Anthony Swarzak, returning from a disabled list stint. Perdomo is to be replaced by outfielder Matt Carson, who is not yet on the 40-man roster, so another move is pending.

Bypassed was Chris Parmelee, who has been demolishing International League pitching in between stints rotting on the major league bench. And skipping him right now is the right thing to do.

Carson is the better fit for a bench role. As I see it, the Twins should only recall Parmelee if they intend to play him. If he's going to start once every five games or so, he -- and the organization -- will be much better served leaving him in Rochester.

It's better for Parmelee because he'll continue to get daily playing time.

It's better for the organization because the Twins really want to retain their affiliation with Rochester; because the Rochester ownership has made it obvious that the biggest issue they've had with the Twins is the quality of teams they've been putting on the field; and because the Red Wings are playing by far their best baseball in three seasons and are in the hunt for a playoff berth.

They've got a better chance to make the International League postseason if Parmelee is playing there than if he's sitting in Seattle this weekend. And Rochester is more likely to re-up with the Twins if the Red Wings make the postseason.

For that matter, this may be an overlooked benefit to returning Brian Dozier to Rochester.

Notes, quotes and comment

The Tsuyoshi Nishioka farce will continue,  more or less.

Terry Ryan told the beat writers Thursday that Nishioka is staying despite the horror show he put on in Cleveland:

"He had a very difficult game yesterday and we all saw it but the only way to find out how he’ll respond up here is to play him."

Ryan went on to:

• imply that Nishioka's status depends on Trevor Plouffe's availability; Ryan appears inclined to send Plouffe on a rehab assignment before activating him. (This would allow Plouffe to test the thumb under game conditions without restarting the disabled list clock if the thumb needs more time);
• deny that Ron Gardenhire was under orders to play Nishioka;
• insist that Nishioka got the call-up not because the Twins have so much invested in him as because he was the most logical player to fill the spot. (Sean Burroughs and Pedro Florimon were injured, and Eduardo Escobar, acquired in the Francisco Liriano trade, couldn't be recalled because he had been optioned out less than 10 days earlier and there was no injury involved.)

The beat writers have interpreted all this as: Nishioka's on the roster, but only until Plouffe returns, and he's not going to play. We'll see; that phrase about the only way to find out is to play him suggests something different to me. 

---

Baseball America has this piece about possible affiliation changes in Triple A, with the Rochester-Minnesota connection prominent.

In a nutshell: The Red Wings like the way the Twins deal with them but isn't happy with the teams they've been given in recent seasons. So they're keeping their options open.

Here's the fear for the Twins: Buffalo (now affiliated with the Mets) is expected to hook up with Toronto (which is now affiliated with Las Vegas). The Mets would doubtless rather shift to Rochester than Las Vegas, which has a number of drawbacks and may be the least attractive of all the Triple A affiliations.

Working in the Twins favor: The reason Buffalo is eager to cut ties with the Mets is that the Mets haven't provided winning teams, so Rochester isn't necessarily improving its chances of having a quality squad by changing affiliates. 

BA figures the Red Wings will stick with the Twins for two more years. And the Mets will wind up with Vegas.

Notes, quotes and comment

To remain part of the Twins system.

I took note a while back of the number of minor league affiliates whose arrangements with the Twins were expiring after this season. One of them has apparently been settled; John Shipley of the Pioneer Press tweeted Wednesday that the New Britain (Conn.) RockCats and Twins have extended their "working agreement" through 2014.

New Britain is the Double A affiliate in the Eastern League, and there was, at the time of the original post, speculation that the new owners of the franchise were interested in hooking up with the Mets.

Rochester (Triple A) and Beloit (Low A) are also expiring affiliations.

---

As far as I know, Brian Dinkelman is the only Twins farmhand involved in this bracket. I don't think he's got a chance.

---

Jonathan Sanchez was designated for assignment Tuesday by Kansas City -- a status that means We don't know what we're going to do with him, but he's not playing for us anymore. They have nine more days in which to dispose of him.

If there's any team in need of power arms for the starting rotation, it's the Twins. Of course, if there's another, it's Kansas City, and they've seen quite enough of Sanchez. Still, Sanchez' record with San Francisco was solid enough to start some Twitter chatter about whether the Twins should pursue him.

I don't know why his walk rate, never good, has ballooned, or (probably more important) why his strikeout rate has cratered. And without answers to those questions, I'd pass on him. Certainly the Twins ought not pick up the remains of his $5.6 million contract.

---
Trevor Plouffe hasn't homered in two weeks, but he hasn't had a hitless game this month and has only struck out eight times. He hasn't had a lot of multi-hit games  during the16-game hitting streak (Wednesday's was the fourth), and he's drawn only three walks, so the on-base percentage hasn't budged, the slugging percentage has actually dropped, and the batting average is only creeping up.

Still, the consistency is encouraging.

Following up on the affiliation post

The longer I run this blog, the more certain I am that I don't really know what my readers will respond to. I figured my post earlier in the week on the Kim Kardashian/Kris Humphries ball would get some reaction; nothing. I figured my post earlier today on a possible change in a minor league affiliation was a throwaway; I got four comments, which is a lot for this blog.

And what's more, I wanted to respond to each.Very unusual.

So, here we go ...

Thrylos98 commented on the distance between the major league team and their top affiliates and said it's unusual. I don't think it is, particularly for Midwestern teams. There are no Double A leagues in the Midwest; the Double A  leagues are the Eastern League, the Southern League and the Texas League. As for the Triple A: There are few Triple-A caliber cities in vicinity of Minnesota, and Des Moines (Cubs) and Omaha (Royals) ain't switching. (The devotion of Omaha fans to the KC affiliation is such that one attempt to change the team's nickname from Omaha Royals died of popular rejection.) The White Sox's top affiliate is in Charlotte; the Brewers' is in Nashville. There's nothing the Twins can do about geography.

Andy asked about the Blue Jays Triple A affiliation with Las Vegas. Truth is, nobody wants to be affiliated with Vegas; that's largely a function of the hitter-happy environment. It's difficult to develop pitchers there. And being in the Pacific Coast League is particularly awkward for an Eastern team. The Jays would likely jump at an opportunity to get back to the International League, but that's not related to the Eastern League shuffle I was describing. I would think the Twins want no part of Vegas, and doubt they want to be anywhere in the PCL.Which is part of why they want to keep the Rochester people from looking elsewhere.

Andrew, I know, posted a piece a while back on his blog about Bill Smith representing the Twins at a RockCats event last month. Smith, he says, praised the player development at New Britain and a few other affiliates while saying nothing about Rochester.

That, I think, says more about the coaching staffs than about the affiliates. The Twins have replaced the manager and hitting coach at Rochester. Teams may be discontented with facilities or travel issues regarding specific affiliates and want to move accordingly, but if the players aren't developing, that's a personnel issue, not an affiliate issue.

But it takes two to be happy with an affiliation. The Twins hooked up with New Britain in no small part because they had a relationship with New Britain owner Joe Buzas, who also owned the Salt Lake City Triple-A team the Twins were then affiliated with. Buzas died in 2003. It's possible the Rock Cats' current ownership would rather link up with the Mets, whose fan base is practically next door.

And JimCrikket suggests the Twins might want out of Beloit, their Midwest League affiliate (low A). They might indeed; Beloit is not regarded as one of the gems of the league, although I suspect there are others (Burlington and Clinton, for example) whose facilities might be even less well regarded. I know the Twins were unhappy when Quad Cities ditched them for a St. Louis affiliation.
Personally, I'd love to see the Twins in Cedar Rapids, but I don't know how likely that is.

Doin' the affiliation shuffle?

The Twins have made no secret this offseason of their concern about their Triple A affiliation with the Rochester Red Wings. They like having their top minor league affiliate there for a variety of reasons, but the Wings are free agents after the 2012 season, and the Twins have not provided them with sufficient talent to win in recent years.

Which is why the Twins imported Gene Glynn (Waseca and MSU hero) to manage in Rochester, and why they've signed umpteen minor league free agents. It isn't just about winning here, it's about winning there too.

The Double A affilation, it appears, may also be in jeopardy. The Twins have been affiliated since 1995 with the New Britain (Conn.) RockCats in the Eastern League. That's where Chris Parmelee and Joe Benson played last season before their September call-ups and where Liam Hendriks spent most of 2011 as well.

Follow these complexities: The New York Mets' longtime Eastern League affiliate, the Binghamton Mets, are reportedly about to be sold and the franchise moved to Ottawa, Canada. Once in Ottawa, the idea is that they will affiliate with the Toronto Blue Jays, the major league team of choice in the Canadian capital. That makes sense.

The Mets would be without a Double A affiliate. Both ESPN New York and Newsday have reported in recent days that they would align with New Britain; Newsday notes that New Britain is actually an hour's drive closer to New York than Binghamton.

The Twins, under this scenario, would wind up connected to the New Hampshire Fisher Cats in Manchester, N.H. I've no idea if that would be seen as a better or worse affiliation for the Twins.

But at least it would keep the Twins affiliated with a Something Cats.