MLB To Begin Official Minor League Baseball Changes With Appalachian League At Worst Possible Time

This has been in the works for years, but it’s still so devastating to see.

A press conference will reportedly take place on Tuesday that will take the rookie level Appalachian League from a professional Minor League Baseball league to a summer college wood bat league. It’s just the first phase in a plan that will contract a quarter of MiLB’s teams as part of a new overarching player development agreement with Major League Baseball.

MLB wasn’t satisfied with many teams playing in what it considered substandard stadiums and training conditions. And with the end of a 10-year Professional Baseball Agreement with the Minor Leagues up after a 2020 season that never happened due to the coronavirus pandemic, MLB had all the leverage and plan on making sweeping changes to the game.

Each of the 30 MLB teams will now have only four minor league affiliates, and that process is beginning with stripping the Appy League of its professional status. The Appalachian League was founded in 1911 and until next week will have had 10 teams scattered within the rural mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee.

It was the start for so many amazing prospects and pro stars, with the season beginning in late June and going until mid September. The league’s first Hall of Fame class last year included alumni like Greg Maddux, Kirby Puckett, Cal Ripken Jr. and Nolan Ryan.

For communities like Elizabeton and Johnson City in Tennessee, Burlington in North Carolina and Danville in Virginia, these teams are interwoven within the fabric of their communities, an economic engine that drives fans and business into the local areas.

These professional teams are now being ripped away from small business owners, stadiums will now host amateur games instead of professional ones. And all this is taking place during a pandemic, when small businesses and communities across the country are hurting the most. This is also expected to take place in the Pioneer League, impacting eight teams based in Idaho, Montana, Utah and Colorado. For the former two states, it’s their only professional sports teams.

Major League Baseball can afford to continue these leagues going forward, just like it can afford to pay Minor League Players a living wage. In both cases, MLB chooses not to. Will a wood bat league featuring top college players be nice? Sure. But to be affiliated with a Major League team, to feel like you’re a part of something big in a small town in Appalachia or the Rocky Mountains? Those feelings are being ripped apart in a time of great pain and suffering for the country.

After 110 years, amid a devastating pandemic, MLB felt like the Appy League just wasn’t profitable enough, just not worth saving. An American tradition, a summer staple and an integral part of nearly a dozen rural communities will be gone. And it’s a damn shame.

And the worst part? This news is only the beginning.