Tuesday we learned that the Minnesota Twins and their top minor league affiliate, the Rochester Red Wings, have ended a nearly two-decade long relationship. It’s more fallout during a year of upheaval in minor league baseball, which the New York club that dates back to the 19th century plans to persevere through.
The Red Wings have only been affiliated with three Major League teams since 1929, the Cardinals, the Orioles and, since 2003, the Twins.
Justin Morneau, Michael Cuddyer, Kyle Gibson, Jason Kubel, and even Joe Mauer, albeit for a short time, have come through the downtown ballpark called Frontier Field, taking their at-bats with a beautiful view of the skyline, including the iconic Kodak building which once employed 60,000 people.
The franchise has faced hardships before. In the 50s when the Cardinals departed, a man named Maury Silver organized a stock drive to save the team. It’s been community-owned ever since. But the combination of the pandemic eliminating a 2020 season and seismic changes in minor league baseball have been extremely challenging.
“Now that it is over and we’re left without an affiliate and, to my knowledge, there is no affiliate lined up yet for Rochester, that kind of leaves us hanging a little bit,” Nate Rowan, communications director for the Red Wings and a Minnesota native who remains a fan of the team, said. “Are we going to be a Triple-A team? Are we going to be a Double-A team? Are we even going to have a league?”
Clubs are eyeing triple-A affiliates in close geographical range. That’s where reports of a possible relationship with the St. Paul Saints come in. CHS Field hosted the Twins so-called taxi club during the shortened 2020 season. It’s also one of the best attended and creative franchises in sports. However, it could cost as much as $20 million for the Indy Ball team to become an affiliate.
“I don’t think (the Twins) took this lightly, but I think they decided, and maybe having the alternate training site in St. Paul was the fuse that lit the powder keg, but having guys as close as possible works for a lot of teams,” Brandon Warne, founder of Access Twins, said. “Kansas City (Omaha) comes to mind. Chicago with the Iowa Cubs. There’s an advantage there. I don’t know if it’s a distinct, huge advantage, but if you need an extra reliever and the team is just a quick car ride away, a back-up catcher, that kind of thing, it’s obviously much more beneficial to do that the day-of, instead of the night before.”
The Twins informed Red Wings management it was moving on this week before reports surfaced, a sharp difference from the Yankees organization with at least two affiliates saying they found out they were dumped on social media.
Minor League baseball is being cut down by 40 to 120 teams and is being completely reorganized as major league clubs streamline facilities and rosters. Short season is eliminated and early Twins stops like Elizabethton, Tenn., which won 16 division titles in the Appalachian League in its 46 years with the club,is no longer an affiliate. Small communities that turned out to see a future star, or even hosted them in their homes so the players could save money on board and rent, will no longer get the opportunity.
“Frankly it stinks,” Warne said. “Rochester will probably land on its feet because it’s so close to big league affiliates so someone will want it as a Triple-A affiliate. But what about Elizabethton? That ballpark, what happens to that? What happens to the communications staff? What happens to the ushers? What happens to the grounds crew? All of that has kind of been dismissed. If it was going to come in conjunction with an improved pay structure for minor leaguers, which I think a lot of us have been banging the drum for for a long time, that might make it an easier pill to swallow, but there’s really no incentive for teams to do that.”
And mid-sized cities like Rochester that can draw more than 10,000 on perfect summer nights will have to wait and see what becomes of their long baseball tradition.
“There’s a lot of community involvement with the team,” Rowan said. “We’ve always had a ton of community support. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of people disappointed that the Twins are no longer here, but also excited for a Major League team to come in and understand what baseball means to this city.”