The New York Yankees did, uh, not do a good job of telling the Staten Island Yankees that they were done.
The Red Sox got all the vitriol for dropping their Alex Cora re-hiring news in the wake of some serious developments in the presidential election, but to be perfectly fair, the Yankees deserve some scorn for their news dump, too.
Knowing there was about to be plenty of anger in the air, the Yankees chose this particular moment to get out ahead of things and reveal that they were making a major restructure of their minor-league system, kicking Charleston, Staten Island and Trenton to the curb.
Apparently, at least two of these teams had no idea this ruthless move was coming (or, at least, coming this weekend), as Trenton released a loud and emphatic statement claiming they were blindsided.
On Monday afternoon, Staten Island’s ownership joined the party, resoundingly decrying the Yankees’ closed-door changes, claiming they found out they’d lost their affiliation on Twitter.
You simply cannot do that.
Now, we’re just missing the Charleston owners accusing the Yankees of malfeasance, and we’ll have a complete set on our hands. Don’t expect that, though — the Goldklang Group has an ownership interest in Hudson Valley as well, so they net out evenly.
Whether Staten Island’s facilities were in poor shape or not isn’t the point here. Clearly, the Yankees intended to make this move pre-pandemic and found a solid excuse to get out under cover of darkness. To not inform the franchise you intended to make this switch, let alone to claim everything was copacetic for months, is embarrassing.
And it’s about to happen everywhere else across the country, too.
My childhood minor league team was the Trenton Thunder. To suddenly pull a team of future big leaguers from that park (which is gorgeous and a close drive for so much of the tri-state area and NYC) sucks and makes me sad. Can only hope they get a new affiliation https://t.co/O6uIRcu2QA
— Bobby Wagner (@bwags) November 9, 2020
Love ’em or hate ’em, the Staten Island franchise was built for the express purpose of serving the New York Yankees two decades ago.
MLB, Rob Manfred, and the individual teams appear to be unified in the notion that they can do whatever they want, minor-league cities be damned. Expect many more of these announcements to come league-wide, and very few positive ones.
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