Jim Crikket

The attendance figures are telling, but the underlying (and perhaps more important) fact behind the attendance is that the teams with higher attendance are in many cases also the teams with newer, larger stadiums... stadiums that also are more likely to have better clubhouse/training facilities for the players. I think that probably carries more weight with potential MLB affiliates than the attendance at games itself. It's not like ticket/concession revenue affects the revenues/expenses of the MLB affiliate. Five of the top six MWL attendance figures are in the league's Eastern Division. Those communities are where the league have new teams with newer stadiums in relatively larger population areas (Michigan, Ohio, Ind) than where the MWL's center was (Iowa, Wisc, and western Ill) 15 years ago. I don't think the Twins or Cardinals would weigh attendance heavily enough to make them inclined to move their MWL affiliate out of the Western Division. I have heard, however, that players like playing at Dayton because it's not unusual to be playing before a crowd of 10,000 or more and that's a lot more people than most of these kids have played in front of up to this point in their lives, unless they happened to play college ball at one of the NCAA baseball-factory programs.

Howard Sinker's StribSports upload today calls our attention to a Rochester Democrat and Chronicle feature on Red Wings hitting coach Tom Brunansky. Good stuff in both articles. http://www.startribune.com/sports/blogs/167029655.html http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/A2/20120820/SPORTS06/308200037/Rochester-Red-Wings-Tom-Brunansky?odyssey=nav|head So here's the question... is Bruno best utilized in his current capacity of teaching prospects how to get to the Bigs or should he be considered for the Twins' hitting coach?

nowheresville: You're probably right about CR not having a good shot at landing the Cubs affiliation, considering there are so many other expiring PDCs in the MWL. That said, I think the Kernels BOD may have been thinking that Des Moines having the Cubs AAA team may have helped. Front office types are always looking for ways to make the most of their time and "clustering" affiliates geographically is one way some MLB teams are doing that. That said, I know there's at least one CR BOD member who really did NOT want the Cubs as an affiliate, but I think that member was in the minority. sbknudson: I think you may be right about it not being a huge deal when a minor league team changes affiliations between two teams that each have a significant fan base in the area, such as the Cubs and Cardinals in Peoria. I do think it will make a difference if Peoria ends up affiliated with a MLB team that has little or no presence in the area, though. Just as I believe it will have a positive effect in CR if the Kernels can catch on with a midwestern MLB team. Even after a 20 year affiliation, you still see 10 times as much Twins, Cubs and Cardinals gear at a Kernels game than you do Angels attire (though one or two regulars are sporting new Mike Trout jerseys this season). There's also another little wild card in play here and that's the Cardinals. I think the Quad Cities would like to keep them, but since no extension has been signed, we're left to assume that St Louis or QC is interested in exploring other options. Would they go back to Peoria if the Cubs vacated? Or would they look toward Cedar Rapids where there's some fanbase, but it could certainly stand to be increased? Just as I think it would make sense for the Twins to try to develop a stronger presence and perhaps increase media (TV/radio) market in Eastern Iowa, the same could be said for St Louis. While Kansas City is about the same distance from CR as StL and MSP, I just don't see the same dynamic in play for the Royals. I haven't seen Royals gear around town since local boy John Wathan was suiting up for the Landed Gentry.

Pavano went on to say he'd take the blame. As he should. After all, ANY Twins player who has so much as a hangnail and doesn't get several opinions outside of the Twins so-called medical staff should accept the blame for just being stupid.

Seems premature, given the date teams can begin negotiations is still weeks away, but SunTimes is reporting that the Cubs are in the process of working out a PDC with Kane County, ending their MWL relationship with Peoria. http://www.suntimes.com/sports/14636291-419/cubs-plan-to-move-class-a-peoria-chiefs-to-kane-county.html If that's true, it significantly improves the odds that the Twins end up in Cedar Rapids next year. The CR Board has notified the Angels that they are going to look at other options and hope to find a closer geographic MLB affiliate. I've heard their top two choices were the Cubs, if they left Peoria, and the Twins. If indeed the Cubs are off the board, that assures that the Twins are at the top of CR's list. Kane County has been affiliated with the Royals, so Kansas City would also meet the "geographic" requirement for Cedar Rapids (CR is about the same distance from MSP as it is KC), but the Royals are not seen as nearly the same local draw that the Twins are.

I actually don't personally even have the Direct TV option due to not having a clear enough "view" of the satellite where I happen to live, but hey... I could always move, right? After all, why would an entertainment business want to encourage the expansion of their fan base in an adjoining state, especially when they're already raking in top dollar for their media rights? oh... wait... the Twins media rights are going for pennies on the dollar compared to other markets because their cable affiliate doesn't reach enough households. Bottom line is that the Twins have, for whatever reason, decided Iowa is not worth marketing to and for now, I guess I'm OK with that... it's not like the product they're committed to putting a product on the field that is compelling to watch anyway.

Why I WON'T watch: The same reason I've had for years... The Twins and MLB, in their infinite wisdom, have determined that almost nobody in the state of Iowa should be ABLE to watch and thus black out the entire state from viewing over MLB.tv. That leaves me the options of Direct TV (which I have no interest in) or listening to audio-only over the web or smartphone. I admit that even if I have the game on, I'm not paying very close attention to it these days. The story lines you mention, John, do interest me. If I COULD watch, I probably would do so. What I've actually chosen NOT to do this season is drive 4.5 hours (each way) to watch Twins games in person. I didn't start out intending not to do so, but frankly the whole "cut the payroll" thing last offseason when it was so clear that this team needed rotation help pretty much sent me the message that Terry Ryan wasn't serious about putting a respectable team on the field. Given that, I didn't fell particularly inclined to spend a bunch of money on trips to support that approach. But this doesn't mean I'm not watching baseball. I've been to more Cedar Rapids Kernels games this summer than I have in years and their season has been even worse than the Twins (can the Angels' farm system really be this bad?). So, the reason I won't watch is that the Twins and MLB don't want me to watch. Whether I watch next year will depend on their blackout policy and whether I bother to make trips to watch them in person will depend on whether Terry Ryan gets serious about his roster this offseason.

That may be... and I also think a lot of Law, btw... but if you're going to call in to question a young player's work ethic (which Law clearly is doing here) and not just his defensive abilities, then I think you should give a little more detail concerning your basis for doing so. I'd like to know if Law watched pregame infield or spoke to coaches or scouts or maybe team mates or someone within the Twins front office. Did Sano's body language give a hint as to his mindset defensively? Was he slow to cover a base or get in to cutoff position? I've seen Sano play 6-7 times this year and there's no question that his defensive skills are below average at 3B, so if Law had simply commented on defensive shortcomings, there'd be no question here. But his comments concerning Sano's "disdain" for defense go deeper than lack of ability and I expect more from a writer I respect as much as I do Law if he's going to call a young man's character in to question.

Since Law's column is "Insider Only" it's probably not OK to post it here. Suffice to say, while he was impressed with Sano's swing and overall offensive potential, he's not a fan of Sano with a glove. The money quote, imo, is this: "Sano's biggest drawback is his obvious disdain for the defensive side of the game." It appears that Law only stuck around Beloit for the Friday night game, which is unfortunate. Hard to give much credibility to any opinion based on one game/

I think this about says it all. We are agreed that if the Twins can get a better deal elsewhere they should take it. I'm okay with that. It does and I agree totally. I just find it ironic that someone who advocates that Lee County violate the legally binding contractual terms of a valid lease would have the gall to refer to the Twins' "empty promises."

I think we've hit on the problem. If milhouse is an example of the typical local Lee County baseball fan, they clearly don't get what the Spring Training "experience" is for a significant portion of the ST visitors. We don't go down there to watch a game or two where the regulars play half the game. If that's all you see ST is about as a fan, then (a) you're cheating yourself, or ( you're a pretty casual fan. And not many casual fans shell out a grand or more to spend several days attending a MLB Spring Training. As Thrylos indicated, in addition to the games, it's about spending time on the back fields watching MLB and minor league workouts and B games and minor league games and getting a good close look not only at the current Twins, but those that are coming up through the system. That's what we visitors pump millions of dollars a year in to your local economy for. As a casual fan (and barely that), I would guess you have no idea what the standard is that's been set for the "five newest ballparks" in Florida. Those "goodies" you're whining about are exactly what's going in to those other facilities. Then again, you and the rest of the anti-baseball crowd have already made it well known that you don't give a rat's behind about the county honoring their side of the existing contract/lease. Thry, from what I've been told, the AZ facilities are great. Yes, two teams may share a stadium, but that's just for games. I've been told both teams have their own set of facilities for workouts and minor leagues. Essentially, we'd be able to not only wander the fields and watch Twins prospects play, but could also go catch a bit of the prospects for whichever team shared the complex with the Twins. Not a bad set up. In fact, if Lee County was smart, they'd have done something similar with the Twins and Red Sox and/or Nationals. That wouldn't address their desire to put someone in the old City of Palms ballpark, though. Then again, I can't see how they con any team in to taking the Red Sox leftovers anyway.

Yeah, JB is right. I like going to FL, but it would be no more expensive for me to go to AZ. There are plenty of discount airlines flying to AZ to keep costs down. In fact, in March it may be cheaper to fly to AZ since that's much less of a "Spring Break" destination than FL is. Demand for airline seats in March to FL is relatively high which makes those seats a bit pricey at times. May not be the case to AZ. I don't really expect the Twins to leave Lee County. But sbknudson is absolutely right. They are a business and have a legally binding contract with Lee County regarding maintenance of the facility at a high level. If the County Commission decides not to honor that contract because the political winds in the area are blowing against baseball, the Twins absolutely should explore all options. By the way, if Lee County fails to live up to the terms of the lease, good luck ever getting another organization to come to the area. They'll have demonstrated that their word is worthless because whoever the current Commissioners are can't be counted on to live up to the terms of contracts entered in to earlier. That is a dangerous reputation to establish with the business community.

By the way, the Twins and other teams are no different than any other business. They don't own the property they use, they lease it from the owner. If my business leases commercial space from a landloard and that lease calls for the landloard to maintain the property up to certain standards, I damn well expect the landlord to keep his end of that contract. If he doesn't, I'll break the lease and go elsewhere and leave him with his empty property. If Lee County won't keep their end of the lease, that's exactly what the Twins should do. Leave Hammond empty and let Lee County (and their residents who are too principled to allow tax dollars to be used to assist an industry that brings millions of dollars of revenue in to the community) eat rocks.

mlhouse, what you seem to be missing (or ignoring) is that the terms of the Twins lease (which is a legally binding contract, by the way) with Lee County calls for Hammond to be maintained at a level with the five newest ST facilities in Florida. Then again, I guess to some people, contracts mean nothing. If your community doesn't wish to live up to the terms of their contract with the Twins, that's fine. They'll go elsewhere and you can move on without the revenues that the Twins generate for your community. You and your neighbors will be worse off financially, but hey at least you'll be comforted by the fact that you didn't give any money to the big bad Twins owners.

I'm not sure that's cynical at all. It may just be good business. If they can channel revenue from the Twins to their radio station, I suppose it could possibly affect where they stand in terms of revenue sharing, etc. Of course, it would also reduce the total revenue that they use to measure the "52%" from in order to establish a target payroll. But they wouldn't play that kind of game with their fanbase

Yeah CR draws about 2500-2800 per game on average, so that's comparable to what Clearwater is pulling. They shoot for 200,000 tiotal attendance for the season (70 games) and generally come in around 180-190,000, which pretty much allows them to break even anyway (the team is community owned, so there's no "profit" incentive). Tonight there was 4,000 for the CR game, which was a very good crowd. Like I said, the Eastern Division of MWL (where most of the newer stadiums have been built as the league has gradually migrated east in to the higher population areas of Ohio and Michigan) generally has much higher attendance figures than the Western Division. A few years ago I went to a Miracle game played against the Yankees Class A team in Tampa and I was shocked... there couldnt have been 500 people at the Yankees stadium. Yeah it was warm but still... unbelievable.

I hope you're right about the last part, anyway. I really enjoy going down to Ft Myers. Then again, I also usually make a trip or two up the coast to other communities for games and they are nice, too. I'd like to see the Nationals at City of Palms, but it never made a lot of sense to me for another team to come in to a facility that wasn't good enough for the Red Sox. The same problem is going to exist (the stadium is quite a ways separated from the practice diamonds and minor league facility) that the Red Sox found problematic. That can't be fixed. That said, it would be nice to have a 3rd team in the area so more ST games would be right there in the county.

Sano hit one out to CF. Law should be wetting himself over that.

I get the feeling that the Rochester organization was really surprised by how few people showed up for S/W-B Yankees "home" games in Frontier Field. I think they drew about half of what they saw for Red Wings games. I'm actually kind of glad it went that way. It says the local fan base is more committed to the Red Wings as "their" team, regardless of affiliation. I also wonder if that didn't send a message to the Rochester decision-makers that a more local affiliation isn't as important as some of them thought it might be. Thus just one more reason not to take a risk on the Mets next year.

Of course, if this had been a "normal" year, the Red Wings would have been 10th of 14 teams in the IL. S/W-B played all of their "home" games in other stadiums (most at Rochester) while their stadium gets renovated. If they'd been playing in their own stadium, they'd have been well above the Red Wings' attendance. I find the Florida State League figures interesting. The Clearwater (Phillies) league high attendance levels would barely be a respectable average crowd for Midwest League Western Division (the Eastern Division of the MWL does far better on average). It's just another indication that there's not a huge market for baseball in Florida. Could turn out that the new Marlins stadium was money down the drain and that it would be foolish to build a new ballpark for the Rays.

Because those standings didn't matter to YOU, they also don't matter to anyone else? Thanks... now we know that the rest of us can just not bother forming an opinion. I happen to know plenty of fans of minor league teams that DO feel their local team's record and place in the standings matters to them and I think it's pretty arrogant to say those people are embarrassing themselves for feeling that way.

You can't really put a lot of credence in to what a few blowhard fans in Rochester say. Of course they don't want the Twins after the past couple of seasons' lousy teams. But then you ask who they DO want and the same idiots would have no clue what the choices were. Every AAA fanbase wants the Yankees or Red Sox but they can't have 10 AAA affiliates each. If you sat one of these idiots down and made them see what the Rochester choices effective are... Mets (maybe) or Twins... and showed them what the various Mets AAA locations had experienced over the past 10 years... they'd know they had to re-up with the Twins. Mandelaro, once he looked at the same information, came to that exact conclusion. He's right though, if the Twins had continued down the path they were going a month or two ago and had ended up with a third straight 90-loss season, the preferred choice probably would have been to take their chances with the Mets... and I wouldn't have argued that they made the wrong choice. A certain vocal segment of any team's fanbase is always going to loudly proclaim that the people running the team always make the wrong decision... as we well know in Twinsville.

Obviously, yes. We can only hope that becomes the primary consideration again one of these years.

Nobody should have a problem with this thinking. If we really NEED these players, then yes, we call them up and the minor league teams/fans will understand. But we don't need them so why not let them stay down and help thier team's playoff push. It's interesting to see this discussion take place. The fans of MLB teams get upset if decisions are made to placate MiLB affiliates. Fans of MiLB teams get upset if the MLB parent jerks their best players away when the team is winning. I get a feeling that how a person feels about this issue largely depends on whether you're part of a community with an affiliated minor league team. In truth, the two organizations need one another. Without affiliates, the MLB organization would have to own and manage all of their own minor league teams. Some MLB teams are moving toward this model, but it's not without risks. Without a MLB affiliate, minor league organizations would have to incur payroll costs for players and other field personnel. That would make even breaking even financially almost impossible for most MiLB teams. So yes, the Twins do need to at least consider the effect of late season player moves on their affiliates that are contending for playoff spots. It's not the prevailing factor, but it's a factor. I don't think that's unreasonable when you're talking about a difference of a few days' time one place or another. Then again, I'm a minor league fan.

I'm not even sure if teams are allowed under the rule to extend for more than 4 years. Seems like it's always either 2 or 4 and it seems like you see more 4 year deals when affiliates are making their first agreement. Feels like the two organizations have to really feel like they've got a solid fit to extend for 4 years. I'm an admitted "conspiracy theorist" at heart so I question a lot of things that have no basis for being questioned... that said, shouldn't we wonder why the Twins and Miracle haven't extended yet? I think some of the ownership group of the Miracle are also minority owners of the St. Paul Saints (including actor Bill Murray), but I don't think they have any particular connection to the Twins organization other than sharing a stadium in Ft Myers. I assume that the Miracle ownership has a separate lease with Lee County for use of Hammond Stadium, rather than being part of the Twins' lease with the county. If that's the case, there's really no reason the Miracle couldn't decide to look in to other affiliations. It might be awkward for the Miracle to affiliate with another MLB team and use Hammond Stadium, but it wouldn't be impossible. Not to mention, there are two other stadiums in Lee County that could be leased to the Miracle, if necessary. Both the Red Sox new JetBlue park and their old ST ballpark, City of Palms Ballpark, would arguably be available. It just seems odd that, if the ties between the Miracle and Twins are so close, they haven't already formally extended their PDC.