Earlier this month, MLB announced a proposal to restructure and reduce the footprint of minor league baseball.
The proposal by MLB is to reduce the number of minor league affiliates across the country by up to 42 teams, and to make each MLB franchise more “geographically-friendly” to its minor league affiliate teams.
If accepted, the proposal would take place after the 2020 season when the current labor/working agreement contact expires.
The reduction in the number of affiliates is just a part of a large remake of the current structure of MiLB that could see franchises reclassify between the high minor leagues – Triple A, midlevel minor leagues-Double A, and low level minor leagues-Single A.
The goal of such restructuring/reclassifying is to make the minor league systems of each MLB franchise more geographically friendly in order to reduce travel time.
A small part of the proposal also addresses stadium quality and the importance of how that could affect each MLB team.
Those at risk would be those that MLB has deemed sub-standard.
Which leads us to The Boulevard, and The Diamond, home of the Double A Eastern League Richmond Flying Squirrels.
Could The Diamond, which has been labeled generously as sub-standard for years by Richmond city officials for nearly a decade, also get noticed by MLB and possibly stripped of its team?
While it’s still early in the process, the proposal has gotten full attention of the Flying Squirrels front office management.
The Squirrels are hopeful about the pursuit of a new ballpark, and are working jointly with Virginia Commonwealth University, which shares the Diamond during the Rams’ college baseball season.
Substandard facilities or not, the Flying Squirrels are a box-office success, having led the Eastern League in attendance over the last several years with an average of over 6,000 fans per game.
Richmond has been in the Eastern League for 11 years since the city lost its Triple A franchise, the Richmond Braves, when parent club Atlanta moved them to the Atlanta suburbs of Gwinnett, citing sub-standard facilities in Richmond and the city’s lack of concern over improving them.
Geographic proximity has nothing to do with the Squirrels’ high-flying success. Richmond is the Double A farm to team to the San Francisco Giants, which makes it difficult for local fans to follow the players once they advance up through the Giants’ system.
What works in Richmond is simple: affordable, fan-friendly, entertaining. A driving force behind that is Todd “Parney” Parnell, who serves as the vice president and COO for the Flying Squirrels.
Parnell oversees all aspects of the day-to-day operations and at every game is on the field, dressed in his pajama-like pants serving his overseeing role like starting the wheel barrel race, or manning the dunking booth.
The Squirrels have typical minor league gimmick nights , off-the-wall nights like “the human cannonball night.”
Add it all up and it’s a great way for a couple, a family or even and old man like me to spend a summer night.
However the winds of change are blowing from New York, the home of Major League Baseball.
Could these winds be blowing up a major storm for the Capital City?
Column by Scott German
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