by Bill Moriarity / A’s Farm Editor
December 9, 2020
Major League Baseball unveiled a large portion of its minor league reorganization plan on Wednesday. And as part of that restructuring, the A’s extended invitations to four minor league teams to serve as their affiliates. The teams are the Las Vegas Aviators in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, the Midland RockHounds in the Double-A Texas League, the Lansing Lugnuts in the newly-reclassified High-A Midwest League, and the Stockton Ports in the newly-reclassified Low-A California League.
All four teams are expected to agree to become members of the A’s farm system. And it’s expected that these new affiliate agreements could remain in place for as long as five to ten years.
In addition, every major league team will be able to have a rookie-level team based at their complexes in Arizona or Florida, so Oakland will continue to operate an Arizona League A’s squad out of Mesa. In 2019, the A’s, along with many other organizations, chose to field two teams in the Arizona League. But it’s not yet clear whether or not organizations will be allowed to operate more than one team out of their complexes any longer.
The A’s former Midwest League affiliate, the Beloit Snappers, is now set to join the Miami Marlins organization. And with the elimination of short-season leagues like the New York-Penn League from affiliated ball, the A’s relationship with the Vermont Lake Monsters will be coming to an end.
While Oakland’s top two affiliates in Las Vegas and Midland will remain unchanged, there will be some adjustments at the lower levels for the A’s. With the California League changing classifications from High-A to Low-A and the Midwest League moving up a notch from Low-A to High-A, Stockton will now become the A’s Low-A affiliate, while Lansing will join the organization as the team’s new High-A affiliate.
Under this new arrangement, some of the A’s prospects who played in the Midwest League for Low-A Beloit in 2019 and had been expecting to be moving on to Stockton might instead find themselves back in the Midwest League, with Lansing as their new High-A assignment.
While the A’s former affiliate in Beloit had been one of the weaker franchises in the Midwest League, Lansing has been one of the league’s most successful teams. The Lugnuts’ home ballpark, Jackson Field, can host up to 11,000 fans, which makes it the highest-capacity facility in the Midwest League. And in 2019, Lansing had approximately four times the attendance of the A’s affiliate in Beloit. So, A’s prospects should now be able to look forward to playing in front of much larger crowds during their time in the Midwest League.
As for Stockton, some of the A’s youngest prospects may now begin their professional careers in the warm climes of the California League. So, Stockton fans might now have a chance to get the first look at some of the organization’s newest prospects from the amateur draft and Latin America. And it’s quite possible that players like right-hander Jeff Criswell and outfielder Michael Guldberg, the A’s second and third picks from this year’s draft, could be making their debuts at Stockton next year.
There’s also a possibility that the A’s could decide to have this year’s first-round pick, 19-year-old Turlock native Tyler Soderstrom, begin his pro career in Stockton next season. But even if the A’s choose to keep the highly-touted young backstop in the Arizona League in 2021, he’d almost certainly be making his next stop in Stockton in 2022. And the A’s are still likely to continue using Stockton as a convenient stop for their rehabbing major leaguer players in the future.
Aside from the A’s affiliates, there are many other significant changes taking place throughout minor league baseball. But with different teams coming and going and numerous teams changing levels, the final structure of the leagues at various levels of the minors has yet to be announced.
We do know that Jacksonville, FL, St. Paul, MN, Sugar Land, TX and Worcester, MA will all be gaining Triple-A teams, while San Antonio, TX, Wichita, KS, Fresno, CA and Pawtucket, RI will all be losing Triple-A teams. San Antonio and Wichita are set to join the Double-A Texas League as it expands to 10 teams, while Fresno will join the Low-A California League, replacing Lancaster, and Pawtucket will be replaced by Worcester as the new home of the Red Sox’ Triple-A affiliate. At the Double-A level, San Antonio, Wichita and Somerset, NJ are set to replace teams in Jacksonville, Jackson, TN and Trenton, NJ.
There has also been talk of the minor league season possibly starting a little later than usual next year but, unlike in past years, no minor league schedules have yet been released. So, with many things still up in the air, we’ll just have to wait and see how some things play out in the new minor league landscape.
(Featured Photo by Bill Moriarity)
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