Image: Reddit
With all the problems enveloping Minor League Baseball—wage issues, attendance woes, etc.—what if drastic change was demanded by the MLBPA? What if, in an alternate universe, they get it?
“Starting with the 2023 season, Major League Baseball teams will be stripped of their minor league affiliates,” said Commissioner Rob Manfred at the annual 2022 Winter Meetings, “and those teams will become independent, along with the teams of our four MLB Partner Leagues, striving to ascend American baseball’s new promotional ladder.”
The Buffalo Bisons, Montgomery Biscuits, and even the Lexington Wild Health Genomes (an Atlantic League team), will all be able to compete at the highest level of professional baseball if they do one thing: win.
Gone are the days that the dregs of MLB can relax in the Dog Days of summer during another lost season. In late August, the Miami Marlins will have to scratch and claw to avoid being one of the two teams relegated from the National League.
That’s right, the American League. The 125+ year old system sticks around, with each league in pyramid promoting and relegating not by geography, but by the former major league affiliate’s status.
Eight leagues of 24 teams will make up the pyramid. This means that each league, including MLB, will need to cut some weight. The three teams with the worst record in the AL and NL in 2022 (DET, KC, OAK, WSH, PIT, CIN), and the bottom six in all the other minor leagues, will be dropped down a tier to start 2023.
Each season, the bottom two teams in each sub-league will be relegated to the league directly below it on the pyramid, and the top two teams will be promoted. Manual promotion of league champions that qualified outside of the top four seeds would be too time consuming and most likely not need to happen in many cases.
The Structure:
MLB
AAA
AA
A+
A
Atlantic League of Professional Baseball (Formerly an independent league)
Pioneer League (Formerly an independent league)
Frontier League (Formerly an independent league)
Finances will be remapped to reflect the minor leagues becoming major, player contracts will be reworked to increase movement (opt-out clauses upon relegation), and the amateur draft will be abolished.
Let’s see what happens.
Season One
Okay, the AI isn’t doing exactly what I want it to do. At the trade deadline, the Yankees are about to be relegated at 47-69, and they are trading anybody that isn’t bolted down for prospects. I turned on trading with the lower leagues to simulate young player transfers in European football, and the Bronx Bombers are helping out these lower level teams by sending them real major leaguers.
Kyle Higashioka was traded to the Royals’ former A+ affiliate for the stretch run.
I was interested to see if we can see absurd numbers at the lower levels by players like Higashioka in the same way that Messi is toying with MLS.
Franmil Reyes hits 60 bombs in AAA (a lot of Royals talk).
At the end of the first season, the Yankees were not relegated, and only former MLB teams were promoted from Triple-A, although a few non-MLB teams finished with better records than the Oakland A’s, proving that they are an actual minor league team.
The other thing that I was curious about was if non-MLB teams are competitive in free agency. The teams can trade amongst themselves, and the A’s are a team that’s tired of losing. They traded for Zac Gallen from the DBacks to get back to MLB. The lower level teams want to win, too. Brandon Drury got a AA megadeal ($27mil AAV) as well.
Brian Anderson signs a large deal with the recently promoted High Point Rockers.
This is how the offseason will go, and why the MLBPA is so happy with the situation. Instead of washed up veterans signing with MiLB clubs for peanuts, they get bonafide deals from teams that are incentivized to win now.
Not only would the players benefit, but Major League Baseball, who governs the whole operation, would see their properties become hotter commodities. Certainly, there would be celebrity owners looking to buy low and sell high on a team/market with upside potential.
Bill Murray already owns part of the Charleston RiverDogs. Who’s to say they’re not the next AFC Wrexham? Why shouldn’t a team like the San Antonio Missions be able to compete in MLB? An owner who buys a team like that is avoiding the expansion fees necessary to join any of the other North American pro leagues.
This kind of investment opportunity in smaller markets would be a complete boon for those cities. Bowling Green, Kentucky has a chance to pack their park if they’re able to play a team like the Pittsburgh Pirates in the playoffs.
Everybody wins!
Ten Years in the Future
In my opinion, the real point of this project is to see what the far-off future holds, not what happens in 2024 and 2025. Until talent gradually trickles down to the lower leagues, MLB will dominate. The only way to see the Lake Country Dockhounds compete for a World Series is to move forward.
I decided to cycle through 10 years of pro/rel movements to create a universe that is “settled”. The CPU has made the world into what it wants, and talent distribution has reached equilibrium. Let’s see what we could expect if MLB were to do this.
The Syracuse Mets were the first non-MLB team to make the jump to the top in 2025. Combining the New York Mets’ excellent upper minors talent, and a funny free agent signing of Justin Verlander, Syracuse wasn’t good, but they did enough to avoid being sent right back down to AAA.
The 2027 Sacramento River Cats are the first non-MLB team to make the playoffs. Led by real life San Francisco Giants prospects Patrick Bailey, Kyle Harrison, and Keaton Winn, Sacramento adds veterans Trey Mancini and Sean Manaea to forge a path to the World Series. The 100 game winners were swept by the Kansas City Royals in the opening round.
2027 MLB Preseason Standings (it was at this point that I noticed the subleagues didn’t matter with Kansas City coming back up into the National League, but five non-MLB teams have broken through).
In the inverse to Sacramento, the Miami Marlins had fallen three levels to A+ by 2027. Their first season at that level saw a winning percentage of .530, their first time better than .500 since 2020. Each season, they’ve traded out the last vestiges of the real life team for increasingly worse has-beens. Reliever Cameron Foster has stayed the whole time, while 37 year old Starlin Castro returns to South Beach in an attempt to revive his career.
Over the next five years, the Marlins would continue to bounce between AA and A+.
I wanted to draw attention to Vladdy Jr.’s ridiculousness. Two Triple Crowns and four MVPs before the age of 35. He’s well on track to 3,000 hits and 700 home runs.
In 2032, the River Cats made the World Series, losing to Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s Washington Nationals in six games. They were the only non-MLB team to win a playoff series in the ten years that were simulated. They had two additional NLCS appearances, losing to the Braves both times.
You can see that Sacramento underwent a successful rebuild without being relegated.
The Rochester Red Wings were the only other non-MLB team to make it to the postseason, losing in four games to the Tigers in the 2031 ALDS. In total, 14 non-MLB clubs made the jump to the top of the pyramid, including three AA teams.
The Tennessee Smokies, Tulsa Drillers, and Portland Sea Dogs each made it up to MLB from two levels down. Tennessee’s 78 win season in 2027 was the only time one of these clubs won more than 70 games.
The highest riser of the simulation (tied with the Sioux Falls Canaries) were the Grand Junction Rockies, now known as the Jackalopes. They started in the Pioneer League, were relegated to the bottom-tier Frontier League, and eventually rose in consecutive seasons all the way to AAA. They won only 73 games in 2033, so they’ll stay stagnant for the first time since 2026.
On the way to the second-tier of North American baseball, the Rockies received contributions from the aging Casey Mize and Austin Meadows, as well as prospects Canaan Smith-Njigba and Jett Williams.
The biggest faller of the simulation were the AA Erie Seawolves. By the end of the 2033 season, they learned they’d be relegated to the bottom-tier Frontier League, being dumped for the fifth time in seven seasons.
Before I get to some of the statistical fun we saw in the simulation, I wanted to talk about what we learned. Obviously, a full conversion of the minor leagues into a promotion/relegation pyramid would never happen. It’s logistically impossible at this current moment.
If a system like this were to succeed, it would need to be gradually implemented. I would be interested to see what this would have looked like after World War II, when MLB teams started to relocate and the league began to look at expansion. The talent disparities would have been less, and lower level teams would have had an easier time establishing themselves.
I enjoyed seeing smaller MiLB clubs succeed in this simulation, rather than those that are in markets that could be chosen for MLB expansion. Charlotte, Nashville, Vancouver, and San Antonio were some of the worst performing teams. If anything, the simulation confirms that a great front office is the true key to success; not market size or overall budget.
I hope to see some kind of promotion/relegation in any major North American sport at any fully professional level. I think that it would rejuvenate a sporting landscape that has seen too much sacrificed for the almighty dollar.
Record Breaking Fun
I’ve assembled some records from different levels of the pyramid.
AAA Ball
Nolan Gorman had those two seasons on the bottom; 151 homers in two seasons for Sioux Falls. He registered a record 1.308 OPS in 2033.
AA Ball
DJ Herz, who was recently traded to the Nationals from the Cubs in the Jeimer Candelario trade, punched out 272 batters (15.5 K/9) in 2030 for the Sugarland Space Cowboys. In every full season he’s pitched, which includes some years in MLB, Herz has gone over 200 strikeouts and has gone over 250 in three seasons.
A+ Ball
Current Yankees prospect Drew Thorpe pitched to a sterling 18-0 record for the Somerset Patriots in 2026. It represented by far the best season of his career, with Thorpe never coming close to that year’s 170 ERA+. With a core of Yankee prospects like Jasson Dominguez, Anthony Seigler, and Miguel Andujar, those Patriots won the league championship.
Atlantic League
Edgar Trejo, who just appeared in the ALPB, hit 88 homers and knocked in 201 RBI for the Columbia Fireflies in only 134 games. His 1.472 OPS was the most dominant season for a player at any level, in any amount of games.
Pioneer League
I have no idea what went wrong for the Bowling Green Hot Rods in 2033, but they went 4-92 in the Pioneer League. Maybe the same sinkhole that swallowed up their Corvette Museum did the same to their ballpark. All I know is that whatever happened resulted in ten players posting seasons of -1.9 WAR or worse. This seemed to be the simulation’s only major hiccup.
Let me know what you think about this experiment. It took me a while to set up the world, but it was worth it to see what happened. If there is an OOTP experiment you would like to see us do, contact us!
Categories: Articles, OOTP Experiments
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