A spokesperson for Minor League Baseball said the goal is to make sure it keeps all 160 teams it currently has in its system – including New York organizations like the Auburn Doubledays, Batavia Muckdogs, Binghamton Rumble Ponies and Staten Island Yankees.
He also acknowledged those teams could be threatened by a proposal from the major leagues but said negotiations are still in the early stages. MLB and MiLB are meeting in Dallas to begin face to face negotiations of the Professional Baseball Agreement (PBA) that ties the two systems together.
Minor League spokesperson Jeff Lantz confirmed leaked reports of an MLB proposal which would contract the minors is true.
“The good news is we’ve got plenty of time to negotiate a deal and this was just the very first proposal that will be, it will be one of several that goes back and forth on both sides I’m sure,” Lantz said.
The current deal runs through the 2020 season but in 2021 MLB proposed de-affiliating 42 minor league teams from big league clubs. Those downgraded teams included the Doubledays, Muckdogs, Rumble Ponies, and Staten Island Yankees.
“We don’t want to envision losing any of our ball clubs,” Lantz said. “They all have value in their communities. They mean a lot to the people in each of those cities and we’re going to do everything we can to keep baseball in all those markets.”
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