What If Minor League Baseball Had Bowls?

This summer, Jackie Robinson Ballpark, home of the Daytona Tortugas, will host the Florida State League All-Star Game. The Jack, as it’s known, got its name because Daytona Beach was the first Florida city to allow Robinson to play in a 1946 spring training game. Over fifty years after that game, the Jack was named to the National Registry of Historic Places.  

The All-Star Game will showcase some of the best and youngest players in the minor leagues, celebrating baseball’s future on a stage remembering its past. Except, while the players may continue onward and upward to bigger stages, Major League Baseball wants to leave The Jack behind. You see, the Tortugas are on the chopping block, one of 42 teams MLB has proposed cutting after the 2020 season in order to upgrade facilities that have “inadequate standards.”

As Dave Heller, president and CEO of Main Street Baseball — which operates four teams, three on the list — told SB Nation, MLB’s justification of “inadequate standards” requires some suspension of disbelief. 

“We are trusting that they’re telling the truth when they say this is really about facilities standards, and the 25 percent — their figure — of minor league baseball parks that are not in compliance with MiLB facility standards,” Heller said. “All four of my clubs are easily in compliance with that.”

The true culprit seems to be money. If MLB teams are going to be shamed into paying minor leaguers a living salary, then they’re going to decrease the number of minor leaguers they have to pay. But what if instead of dramatically decreasing the number of minor league clubs and the visibility of the historic venues they play in, MLB made a small tweak that could generate more profit and engineer some excitement for Minor League baseball? What if the minor leagues instituted a bowl system like college football?

Imagine the Jackie Robinson Classic pitting one team from the Florida State League against a team from the Carolina League. Or maybe two Double-A teams: one from the Southern League and one from the Eastern League? Or even a cross-level bowl game: a Southern League representative against a Florida State League club?

The logistics are complicated of course, but if the idea were to work, it would add some novelty to the minor league playoff system and give teams that might miss the playoffs a marquee event. Every year, the Tortugas could sell tickets and merchandise for the Classic while promising fans a chance to see some of baseball’s future stars that are in other markets. And if we’re going with the cross-level idea, there’s even a built in David-vs-Goliath storyline, the scrappy High-A players taking their shot at the more experienced Double-A group.

In practice, the system would look like this: Every minor league season would finish by September 1, a date most seasons already hit. The top four teams by winning percentage at the highest levels — Triple-A and Double-A — would enter a playoff system like the College Football Playoff. The one seed plays the four; the two plays the three. If we’re really committed to the idea, the games could be held at one location, like how Omaha hosts the College World Series, creating another event to promote.

Other than those eight teams, every other minor league team — from Triple-A all the way down to Rookie League — that finished with a winning record will be selected for a bowl. Excluding the non-United States-based leagues (Mexican League and Dominican Summer League), 97 teams finished with winning records in 2019. Subtract the eight in the playoffs and add one lucky .500 team, and you end up with 45 bowl games to be played through September. 

There could be the Chattanooga Lookout Bowl, the Binghamton Rumble, the Music City Melee. Why not have the Louisville Slugger Classic or the San Antonio Showdown? Add in the potential for naming rights and television contracts, and what seems like nothing more than a simple novelty becomes a business opportunity. 

When I ran the idea by Ryan Keur, president of the Tortugas, he liked it even if he was a bit skeptical it could be implemented. 

“I definitely pride myself on being one of those creative innovators — you know, being somewhat opportunistic,” Keur said. “And I think in this sense it’s a really unique proposition that you’d have to get the player development folks on board with.”

Dave Echols, president of the Charleston RiverDogs, also raised the player development concern. “As a minor league operator, I’m open to any kind of opportunity,” Echols said. “I imagine there could be a certain one-off circumstance that everybody could get behind, but I don’t know from the player development side who would want 18-19 year old kids going against a 24-year-old Triple-A guy.”

A fair point, and so our first stipulation: No bowls between teams with more than a one-level difference. A Triple-A team can play a Double-A team, but not a High-A team. Easy enough.

Echols also has more of a hands-on familiarity with the idea than most. For the past few years, the Low-A RiverDogs have played a spring exhibition game against the High-A Myrtle Beach Pelicans. Echols described that exhibition game, called the Battle of the Beaches, as a “win-win for everybody,” adding that the two fanbases enjoy it. Proof of concept! Except maybe not.

Because the Battle of the Beaches is essentially an extended spring training game, it’s not played under rigid competitive rules. If a pitcher strikes out the side but the team wanted him to get some more work, they can just ask for the inning to continue, Echols said. Also, the RiverDogs have yet to win one of the matchups, putting a damper on the idea that cross-level games could be competitive. And Echols noted that any extra travel, even so far as Chattanooga, could be an unrealistic requirement for some teams. 

None of those caveats rule out the idea, though. Just because it hasn’t been tried on a fully competitive level doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work, and the RiverDogs’ 0-for record implicates the small sample of games played more than a mismatch of competition. And if the bowl system is fiscally successful, a little extra travel could be in the best interests of some teams.

As for the logistics for the hosting stadium, it wouldn’t necessarily be too different than what goes into hosting an All-Star Game or other showcase event. According to Billy Ferrante, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation, the bigger logistical hurdle is not planning the game itself but setting the groundwork in the city over the course of the year. 

It may just be one football game, but it’s a whole week-long series of events,” Ferrante said. “It’s not just about that one week but about a presence for the bowl in the community year-round because, to be successful, bowls need support from the community in addition to the support they get from the fanbases of the two schools.”

Ferrante said that because there are only two weeks between the Selection Show and the New Orleans Bowl, most of the logistics are finalized well in advance of knowing who the teams will be. Once the teams are set, he added, the challenge becomes one of marketing: convincing fans to travel to New Orleans rather than staying home. 

Technically, the New Orleans Bowl had a down year this year. Fewer than 22,000 people attended the game despite the inclusion a ranked team for the first time in the bowl’s history, while another 936,000 watched from home, according to Sports Media Watch. 

Now try to imagine a world in which nearly a million baseball fans watching the same minor league game could be considered a disappointment. Football and baseball are different sports, obviously, but the bowl system seems to promote a different kind of experience than the typical playoffs. Fans don’t attend to watch their team raise a trophy as much as they attend for the experience. The opponent often is unfamiliar, and the location can give an excuse to take a vacation. A Jackie Robinson Classic is a convenient reason to take a trip to Florida before the weather goes cold, just as the Music City Melee could convince fans to finally go visit Nashville for a weekend. 

The bigger hurdle would be that colleges, at least in theory, carry much larger and more devout fan bases than minor league teams. While a Wake Forest alum would travel to New York for the Pinstripe Bowl, would a Tortugas fan travel to Chattanooga for a minor league baseball bowl?

That’s where the community work Ferrante talked about would become more important. The bowls likely would need to appeal to the minor league baseball fans in the community more than the specific team’s fans. “This game is your chance to see ‘X’ top prospect,” the marketing would emphasize to the locals.

To Keur at least, that part of the idea holds weight. “I think the novelty of it all would bring fans to the game,” Keur said. “I think if you can bring the highest caliber of baseball, if you can bring Triple-A baseball or Double-A level baseball, I think that’s the draw: bringing some of the best prospects in the game.”

Keur added that he thought the idea could also appeal to a new generation of baseball fans.  “I think baseball has to look at doing things a little bit differently over the next thirty or forty years to change the landscape of the game,” Keur said. 

Would a bowl system raise the same amount of money that cutting 42 teams would save? Probably not, but who knows? The college bowl system has turned into one of the most watched events in all of sports. And at the very least, if MiLB adopts a bowl playoff system, that future baseball landscape still includes the Jack, the Daytona Tortugas, and more baseball for a new generation.