Changes coming to minor leagues in 2021: How Atlanta Braves will be impacted?

Starting in 2021, the minor leagues will be different. Let’s look at what ‘different’ could mean for the Atlanta Braves and the rest of baseball.

MLB has created a proposal that would substantially reduce the amount of affiliated minor league teams, a restructuring that could affect not just the Atlanta Braves, but totally change the way Minor League Baseball is composed.

On Friday, ESPN and Baseball America released reports detailing the story, giving us an initial overview of the potential changes that will take place for the 2021 season, if in fact this proposal were to become reality.

Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball currently have an agreement — The Professional Baseball Agreement — that is set to expire in 2020. The timing of this expiring agreement is important, as people in the industry have been calling for changes in the minor leagues for years.

Well, it’s about to happen.

MLB, and many people in the industry, have been increasingly interested in making drastic changes to the minors, as the growing frustration over player compensation as well as many other well-known deficiencies inside the league has become a recurring problem for baseball.

It’s been bad and it has been bad for a long time.

Like any proposal, changes require an agreement… and an agreement requires negotiations, which is where the two sides seem to be at the moment; that is MLB and minor league teams.

Before I offer up my observations of this new proposal, as well as how I believe the Atlanta Braves will be impacted, first we should probably go over exactly what the proposal entails.

Remember, nothing is absolutely official nor are any of the details 100% worked out. The two sides are far apart in some areas of the agreement, while much closer in others.

But let’s dive in…

The proposal

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The reported proposal is expected to slash 40 minor league teams from the now 160 affiliated clubs (excluding teams that are wholly MLB-owned teams). Going to 120 total teams would obviously require some rather invasive reorganization, and according to released details… MLB has several different changes in mind.

Just from reading over Baseball America’s report…

Not only are 40 teams expected to be eliminated, but MLB has plans to “rework” several of the leagues, “with some leagues getting much smaller, others getting bigger, and teams switching classification levels all around the country.”

Now, a lot of this will be positive for the minors, as MLB plans to improve many aspects of Minor League Baseball:

“We are in discussions with the owners of the Minor League teams to reorganize elements of the system with the goal of improving the working conditions of minor league players,” the MLB statement said, “including upgrading the facilities to Major League standards, increasing player compensation, reducing travel time between affiliates for road games, improving transportation and hotel accommodations, increasing the number of off days, and providing better geographical affiliations between the MLB clubs and affiliates.”

Although, while MLB seems to be interested in making things better in the minors, there are some specifics within this proposal that could very well be portrayed as someone wanting to simply gain more power.

Under the current structure, MLB and MiLB have been negotiating every two years on Player Development Contracts, which is something MLB doesn’t particularly like.

In fact, this new proposal will do away with the two-year pacts and replace them with “much longer-lasting MLB-MiLB franchise agreements,” according to Baseball America.

This would obviously rid the minors of any influence and could potentially create even longer-lasting problems, as the two parties would be locked in on agreements within an even longer time period; meaning, if someone doesn’t like something, then too bad… it’s going to be a while before renegotiations can take place.

MLB also wants to knock down the total amount of Player Development Contracts from 160 to 120 players, which at this time, hasn’t been agreed upon yet.

Here’s how the proposal plans to restructure the full-season leagues:

“The proposal also completely reorganizes the full-season minor leagues. While there would still be Triple-A, Double-A, high Class A and low Class A, those four levels would be completely reworked to make the leagues much more geographically compact. In Triple-A, the Pacific Coast League would shift from 16 teams to 10. The International League would grow to 20 teams. The 14-team low Class A South Atlantic League would be turned into a six-team league with a new Mid-Atlantic league springing up.”

There is also a value-system MLB wants to implement for the restructured league, standardizing the cost/compensation for each team(s) that will be forced to move up or down the ladder:

“The proposal lays out valuations for the different levels. Triple-A is valued at $20 million. Double-A is valued at $15 million. High Class A is valued at $10 million. Low Class A is valued at $8 million, and short-season/Rookie-level teams are valued at $6 million. A team moving up from low Class A to Triple-A would be asked to pay $12 million to move up. A team asked to move from Triple-A to high Class A would receive $10 million in compensation for the move down to a lower level.”

Also within this proposal, the MLB Draft will shorten to 20-25 rounds rather than the 40 we’re used to. MLB plans to create what they call a “Dream League,” essentially a league taking the place of Indy ball and will be operated by MLB and MiLB officials.

With these changes, the draft will move to immediately after the College World Series (end of June or the first of July).

Of course, nothing is set in stone, but according to BA’s report, these adjustments would be “the most dramatic restructuring of the minor leagues in more than half a century.”

Yes, lots going on here…

So how ’bout them Braves? How will this hurt/help our team?

What does this mean for the Braves?

Is it OK if I say I’m not exactly sure? This is uncharted territory, so a lot of this will have to play out.

But, the Atlanta Braves have a little something going for them; something that will perhaps allow them to essentially go through this without its minor league system being completely reshuffled, at least relative to numerous other organizations,

The Braves own six of its minor league affiliated teams, with only the High-A Florida Fire Frogs independently owned. That’s super important, because as I stated on the previous slide, only wholly MLB-owned teams are excluded from this reconfiguration.

That doesn’t mean that nothing will change for the Atlanta Braves, but I would presume that it gives the organization a heckuva lot more power than organizations who don’t own their affiliates.

In terms of good or bad, this all, of course, depends on your feelings toward a minor league shakeup.

For me, there are plenty of things that could be improved regarding Minor League Baseball, but it’s at least a good sign that a bunch of Braves’ minor leaguers will maybe not lose their jobs, or be moved as a result of these changes.

Well… some may lose their jobs.

If the ‘New Minor Leagues’ does, in fact, require teams to only have 120 PDC’s than there must be cuts somewhere.

So under the proposal, we’re looking at over 25 percent of ALL minor league teams being eliminated

In order for this to happen (while also leaving out the exempt teams), much of the eliminating will be done at the short-season level.

So players currently rostered by the Danville Braves (Rookie-Advanced), Gulf Coast Braves (Rookie), and Dominican Braves (Rookie) may be in serious danger, not to mention the independently owned Fire Frogs, who will be fully at the mercy of the changes of this proposed plan.

There was a piece I found over on CubsHQ that mentioned that each organization would be allowed one Rookie ball team. Unless I missed it — I didn’t see that specifically stated in BA’s report — but that could very well be true.

If it is true, then the impact would be a bit less, as instead of dropping three teams the Braves would have to eliminate two.

But fortunately for the Atlanta Braves, the organization has a much smaller pool of players that are rostered on short-season or instruct level clubs, compared to several other organizations.

In fact, as you know, the Braves don’t even have a Low-A team, where a lot of organizations do. Plus, there are several organizations that have multiple GCL and DSL teams, while the Braves just have one per league.

However, if those three short-season Braves minor league clubs had to be eliminated than obviously the players on those teams would either be able to join teams at a higher level (creating more shuffling) or simply be out of a job. People losing jobs never makes me too happy (without getting political here!).