BRONX BOMBERS ABANDON BABY BOMBERS
Over the last year, we've watched Rob "Simon Bar Sinister" Manfred and MLB owners radically alter the landscape of minor and independent league baseball. Major League clubs are pairing down their farm operations to four affiliates each. Over forty teams are presently either ostracised or face elimination, with even more teams and leagues slated for reclassification. The (rookie) Appalachian League has already been reorganized into a wood-bat summer league for college freshman and sophomore players while the New York-Penn League and other short-A season leagues face a similar fate. Major League Baseball also has struck partnerships with the formerly independent Atlantic League, Frontier League, and American Association.
MiLB said in a statement that MLB owners are solely interested in protecting their own profitability. I must agree. If I were an MLB owner - I get it - there's a clear advantage to maintaining all your affiliates within close proximity of the parent club. However, the owners intentionally made no effort to renegotiate in good faith a new bargaining agreement with minor league baseball and have since steamrolled their agenda regardless of the impact on individual proprietors, local communities and economies, and above all, players.
The New York Yankees are perceived to have employed a rather cold and distant tact in severing ties with Trenton, (Charleston), and a local affiliate here in Staten Island. Trenton and Staten Island claim they first learned of the news through (social) media and not until after the New York Yankees official announcement. In separate statements, the Trenton Thunder owner calls the Yankees action a "betrayal" while the Staten Island Yankees owner deems the decision to be "unacceptable."
So incensed is the Trenton Thunder owner he calls the New York Yankees despicable for leaving culturally diverse Trenton for a wealthier, higher socioeconomic area in Somerset.
Trenton is supplanted by the formerly independent Somerset Patriots as the Yankees' new double-A affiliate. The Yankees also bid adieu to Charleston who will be replaced by the Hudson Valley Renegades.
For now, Staten Island is without a team.
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