Grand Junction Rockies

Every year I analyze the movement of minor league baseball teams from one city to another (past analyses). These analyses are based on a paper I published a few years ago in the International Journal of Sport Finance, "Called Up to the Big Leagues: An Examination of the Factors Affecting the Location of Minor League Baseball Teams". For a short description of the model see this post from 2009. One caveat to all of these analyses is that the data for the study comes from 2003 and may be out of date.

The Rockies Short-Season A affiliate in the Pioneer League is moving from Casper, WY to Grand Junction, CO for the upcoming season. By my analysis moving away from Casper makes sense. It was not one of the ten least likely cities to have any baseball team, but it was just above those cities. My research found that Grand Junction would have been more likely to have a minor league baseball team, but neither was particularly likely (15% for Grand Junction vs. 9% for Casper). Grand Junction is almost twice as big as Casper, but the per capita income is higher in Casper. The higher population makes it a much more attractive market, but the income mitigates that effect slightly. Grand Junction has also experienced fairly rapid population growth in the last decade, so the percentage might be understating its appeal.

Grand Junction is in Colorado and they are affiliated with the Rockies so there may be some positive aspect to that. However, Wyoming is also in the Rockies' "sphere of influence" and Grand Junction is only 50 miles closer to Denver than Casper.

Grand Junction does have a fairly low probability of having a team, and I had it third on the list of potential markets in the current geographic scope of the Pioneer League (Northern Rocky Mountain States) behind Fort Collins and Greely, CO. There also seem to have been a couple of less desirable markets than Casper that still have their teams (Helena and Great Falls, MT). However, given all the evidence, this is pretty close to an example of a move that would have been predicted by my model.

The Escondido Beavers

In a previous post, I discussed the Portland Beavers moving to Tucson. Eventually the plan is for the team to move to Escondido, near the major league affiliate in San Diego. When I wrote my paper on the determinants of the locations of minor league baseball teams, I specifically ignored cases where a minor league team is located in the same metropolitan area as a major league team. Partly this choice was because my econometric method did not allow for this possibility, but mostly because this phenomenon did not happen very often. In fact, the league rules pretty much give the major league teams territorial rights to keep minor league teams out of their metropolitan area. The exceptions to these outcomes are either because the minor league team predates the major league team (i.e., the Tacoma Rainiers) or because of the minor league team using creative geography to be just outside the territorial zone (i.e., the Kane County Cougars).

However, in the years since I wrote my paper, the major league teams have decided that either minor league baseball is a complementary good, as opposed to a substitute good, or that having their AAA affiliate nearby is enough of a positive to make up for the substitution effect. The Gwinnett County Braves, the Escondido Beavers and the Lehigh Valley IronPigs all represent examples of teams bringing their AAA affiliate into their metropolitan area, or just outside of it in the case of the IronPigs. Having the AAA affiliate close makes it easier to call up players in case of injury. My guess is that over time the increasing value of proximity of the AAA players and that the changing nature of baseball markets, making minor league and major league baseball more complementary, have both increased the teams' willingness to bring their affiliates into their home markets.

The Tucson Beavers?

The Portland Beavers, AAA affiliate of the San Diego Padres, announced that they would be playing next season in Tucson. I would like to consider this move from the point of optimal team location in minor league baseball (see this post from last year for details on my model). The move is complicated by the fact that the eventual plan is to have the team play in Escondido near the major league affiliate in San Diego, and is probably only using Tucson as a temporary home for a year or two. For now I will just talk about the Portland to Tucson move and then look at the Escondido angle in a future post.

On the face of it this move does not make a whole lot of sense. According to my model, Portland would be the second most likely city, amongst those without major league baseball, to have a AAA team. Tucson is 46^th. I estimate that Portland has a 79% chance of having a AAA team, Tucson has a 15% chance. These rankings should not be too much of a surprise, as Portland has a metropolitan area population of approximately 2.2 million and Tucson's is just over a million.

However, there is the complicating factor of the stadium issue. The Beavers stadium in Portland is being renovated for use for the soccer team in the city. When I developed my model it was based on the idea that the city's willingness to build stadiums for team was endogenous to all of the other factors (population, income etc.). But there may also be other idiosyncratic factors related to willingness to construct a stadium that I could not account for. In this case the stadium situation pretty much precipitated a move. It also explains why a team might move for what might be a one-year stay.

Given that a move was required, Tucson makes a lot of sense. Even though it is ranked 46^th, the two cities (Des Moines and Syracuse) right in front of it in the rankings also have AAA teams, so it is not completely out of line with other AAA cities. If the PCL wanted to keep the team out west, Tucson was the best choice, as the westernmost city ranked higher than Tucson is San Antonio. Lastly, since this might be a temporary move, Tucson does not have a AA or A team being disrupted by the move like San Antonio or Boise would have. Also, Tucson had a AAA team as recently as 2008, so it has a suitable stadium.

A Cubs-Redbirds Pennant Race

The Chicago Cubs have had a bad season and the Cardinals have had a bad couple of weeks. However, one area where both teams are doing well is their AAA affiliates. The Iowa Cubs and Memphis Redbirds have the two best records in the Pacific Coast League. Unfortunately for the two teams they play in the same division, so only one of them will make the postseason, and the two teams square off with a four-game series to end the season. Iowa currently sports a one-game lead, thanks to a nine-run ninth inning comeback last night.

The incompetence of the major league Cubs has gotten so pathetic that I am now more closely following their top three affiliates, all of whom are in pennant races. The AA Tennessee Smokies are running away in the Southern League and the Advanced-A Daytona Cubs are trying to stay in the race in the Florida State League.

Tennessee Smokies

My family and I went on a vacation to the Smoky Mountains last week. As part of the trip I dragged everyone to see the Tennessee Smokies play. The Smokies are the AA affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, my favorite team. Amazingly the Smokies managed to leave nine men on base despite hitting into two double plays. They also had a base runner hit by a batted ball and let the go-ahead-run score thanks to an error by their third baseman. Sounds like they are ready to be called up to the big leagues.

End Snark. Actually two of the nine men left on base were at the end of the game after the winning run had been scored. The error was made by a 20-year old, and the base runner hit by the batted ball was a pitcher who probably hasn't had too many chances to practice base running. And of course they won the game, are 29-20 and in first place despite their starting shortstop getting called up to the Cubs three weeks ago.

Baseball Leaving Oneonta

At the Hardball Times there is an article bemoaning the departure of minor-league baseball in Oneonta. As I have discussed previously, Oneonta is a pretty small city to support a minor-league baseball team. In my study I had it as the third least likely city to host a baseball team that was hosting a baseball team. I would like to admit to one limitation of my study. I was not able to incorporate any measure of tradition and longevity of a team in a location. Tradition and history are an important part of the appeal of baseball, so this is a legitimate concern. For instance, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh with long histories would seem to be better markets for baseball than similarly-sized markets without much baseball history such as Portland and Sacramento. Even with this consideration, the small size of the Oneonta market does not seem to be able to support a Short-Season A team.

I realize there will always be fans who are upset about the loss of a team, but Norwich just seems to me to be a much better market than Oneonta.

Minor League Baseball Returns to Norwich (Without a Missed Season)

Late last year the Connecticut Defenders, a AA minor-league baseball team, moved from Norwich, CT to Richmond, VA. In a previous post I described a paper I had done to examine these types of moves. That move seemed like a pretty obvious choice. Well, it looks like Norwich will still have a minor league baseball team next year (H/T).

According to my model, Norwich was the fifth most over-represented AA level city (see Table 7). However, at the Short-Season A level* that the New York-Penn League plays, Norwich would be on the upper end of the middle of the pack. The team is moving from Oneonta, which I had as the third least likely city to have a minor-league baseball team at any level. Oneonta was a very small city to have a minor-league baseball team, and Norwich seems like a much more promising location.

*Actually in my study I combined the Short-Season A and Rookie levels since they are pretty similar and there was not very many cities in each category.

Minor League Baseball Returns to Richmond

Minor league baseball is returning to Richmond, as the AA Connecticut Defenders will move there next year (H/T Sabernomics). Richmond for a long time had the AAA franchise of the Atlanta Braves. Before last season the team moved to Gwinnett County in exurban Atlanta. One advantage of this move was that having a AAA franchise nearby is advantageous to the major league team, since AAA players are often being called up to the major league team. However, the major issue was that Gwinnett County agreed to build a new stadium, while the park in Richmond was "old" (1985). J.C. at Sabernomics has covered the issue extensively over the last year (see here, here, here and many more).

A few years ago (data from 2003, published in 2006) I did a study looking at the relationship between minor league baseball team locations and various factors (population, income, distance from major league teams, etc.). However, it does not include stadium age or quality, which I was treating as an endogenous factor, i.e., a large city will have more resources to invest/waste on a ballpark. Over time baseball teams have distributed themselves very efficiently with few outliers from the predicted pattern. Table 6 of my paper presents the biggest outliers for AAA, AA, High-A and the metropolitan areas with no teams. According to the model, Richmond should have either a AAA or AA team (leaning towards AAA). If Richmond did not have a team at the time of the study, it would have been 5^th on the AAA list and 1^st on the other three. Richmond with no baseball team is clearly underrepresented by baseball.

Regardless of the stadium issues associated with the Richmond Diamond, the appeal of the Richmond market relative to Norwich, CT was too much for the Defenders' new ownership to ignore. Richmond's metropolitan area population in 2007 was 1,211,101, while Norwich's was 263,770. An additional one million potential fans can make up for a large number of other problems.