The Minor League Baseball landscape is expected to look a lot different in 2021.

A plan that was pushed by the Houston Astros and, according to the New York Daily News, has the support of all 30 Major League Baseball owners would eliminate 42 of the 160 MiLB teams.

On Saturday, The New York Times published a list of the 42 clubs, most of which compete in short-season Class A or rookie leagues. The group includes the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, a short-season Class A club that is an affiliate of the Indians and competes in the New York-Penn League.

The move is part of MLB's effort to upgrade the facilities for minor leaguers, plus eliminating 26% of the clubs would, presumably, improve the pay for the players — something that has been a problem for a long time.

The counter to that, though, is there would be fewer minor leaguers — reportedly a limit of 150 per MLB team. (Some clubs have more than 200.)

And there are plenty of other issues, one of which the Daily News put succintly.

"In truth, as always, it's designed to save money, lots of money, and the proprietors of these minor league teams, many of whom have their life savings invested in them, be damned," wrote Bill Madden.

The Daily News story outlines what it describes as "enormous" repercussions from the plan to get rid of 42 minor league clubs.

MLB, Madden writes, could be "hit with an avalanche of lawsuits from communities that have built new ballparks on taxpayers' money, all of which would figure to threaten their long-cherished antitrust exemption. It's been estimated that $300 million in equity will be lost by the minor league owners whose teams are being eliminated."

The Scrappers, who were founded in 1999 and play at Eastwood Field in Niles, are operated by the Cafaro Co. The Niles-based firm operates more than 50 shopping, dining and entertainment centers in 14 states, including Eastwood Mall in Niles, Sandusky Mall, the Ohio Valley Mall in St. Clairsville and the Millcreek Mall in Erie, Pa.

Mahoning Valley is the Indians' lone short-season Class A affiliate. The Indians' top four minor league teams — the Triple-A Columbus Clippers, Double-A Akron RubberDucks, and Class A Lynchburg Hillcats and Lake County Captains — aren't on the chopping block.

The Scrappers averaged 2,745 fans per game in 2019. The norm was up 1.7% from 2018 and ranked seventh in the 14-team New York-Penn League. The franchise won the New York-Penn championship in 2004.

The club's alumni include Shane Bieber (nine games pitched for the Scrappers in 2016), Francisco Lindor (the first five games of his minor league career in 2011), Jose Ramirez (three contests in '12), Victor Martinez (64 games in 1999) and CC Sabathia (six contests in '99).

Four Double-A teams would be gone, according to the Times. Two — the Binghamton Rumble Ponies and Erie SeaWolves — are part of the Eastern League, in which the RubberDucks compete. The other two — the Chattanooga Lookouts and Jackson Generals — are Tennessee clubs that are part of the Southern League.

The Lookouts have been around since 1885. The New York-based Rumble Ponies are scheduled to host the 2020 Eastern League All-Star Game. The SeaWolves play at UPMC Park, which debuted in 1995 in downtown Erie, at a cost of $9 million.

As the Daily News story points out, the 42 teams that could be gone by the end of next year also include the Williamsport Crosscutters, who play at historic Bowman Field — where MLB has hosted special regular-season games since 2017, and will do so again in 2020.

A September 2018 news release about the Pirates and Cubs playing in Williamsport last summer said, "Historic Bowman Field, in which Major League Baseball and the State of Pennsylvania invested a multimillion-dollar renovation prior to the 2017 MLB Little League Classic, opened in 1926. It is the second-oldest Minor League ballpark in the United States. More than 560 major leaguers, including Hall of Famers Nolan Ryan, Bill Mazeroski, Jim Rice and Jim Bunning, have worn a professional baseball uniform for Williamsport."

Also gone would be the Billings Mustangs, a Cincinnati Reds rookie affiliate playing in a Montana ballpark that opened just 11 years ago, at a reported cost of $13.7 million.

An NBC Sports story on Sunday discussed fans losing access to professional baseball.

"If, for instance, you are a baseball fan who lives in Billings, Montana, the three closest major league teams to you are the Seattle Mariners (west), Colorado Rockies (south), and Minnesota Twins (east)," the story said. "The Mariners are about a 12-hour drive, the Rockies about seven-and-a-half hours and the Twins about 12 hours. But Billings has a minor league team: the Mustangs, a Pioneer League rookie affiliate of the Reds. Montana has two other minor league teams on the chopping block as well: the Missoula PaddleHeads (Diamondbacks advanced rookie) and the Great Falls Voyagers (White Sox advanced rookie). The minor leagues, for fans in certain areas of the country like Montana, are one of the few local connections to the sport. Eliminating those teams would sever those connections and drastically reduce the chance to create new baseball fans in that region."

Despite all of the negatives, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and the 30 team owners appear to be on board with the proposal.

Not everyone, though, agrees.

"I don't see any way we can do something like this," a major league official told the Daily News. "My God, we'll be sued all over the place from these cities that have built or refurbished ballparks with taxpayer money, and this will really put our antitrust exemption in jeopardy. It's crazy."

A lot can change between now and the expiration of the Professional Baseball Agreement, which runs through 2020.

The minor leaguers should be paid a lot more.

But we're not so sure eliminating a quarter of the clubs is the answer.

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