What is a minor league team worth?
Ask a dozen people deeply involved in the game that question and you will get a number of answers.
Several will rightfully point out that the team is worth whatever you can find someone else willing to pay. They’ll look at what other teams in the same classification—or with similar markets or ballparks—have garnered in recent sales and say that’s a rough estimate. Some will take a much more practical approach—take the balance sheet, look at the yearly profits and multiply that by a multiple of three, five or maybe seven. Others will talk about the level of classification, the stadium, the lease, and the scarcity of available affiliated teams and come up with a number based on that.
This simple question has complex answers.
It’s also a much more important question than the average fan understands. If you are looking for an explanation of why Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball are in the final stages of a tense, difficult Professional Baseball Agreement negotiation over the future of the minors, it’s in part because of the price of minor league teams.
There are MLB owners who believe they were forced to overpay for overpriced minor league teams over the past decade. That has led those owners to be some of the most strident in their beliefs that the entire affiliation system that has guided MLB-MiLB pairings for the past 50 years needs to be completely overhauled.
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Denne historien er fra September 2020-utgaven av Baseball America.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Wood Has Towering Upside- Nationals rookie James Wood also stands 6-foot-7 and also has game-changing power.
Aaron Judge and Oneil Cruz are 6-foot7 sluggers who stand out for their power in this year’s MLB Best Tools voting. Wood spent half of this season with Triple-A Rochester before making his MLB debut on July 1. While he was in the International League, he captured managers’ attention. Wood unanimously won Best Power Prospect and also claimed Most Exciting Player in a survey of league skippers. Wood hit .353/.463/.595 with 10 home runs in 52 games for Rochester. His .242 isolated slugging was the best for a player 21 or younger at Triple-A this season.
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