STAUNTON – At the end of September, Major League Baseball announced it would be converting one of its minor league divisions to a summer collegiate league.
The Appalachian League is made up of 10 teams in Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee and, until this summer, was a Rookie Advanced league, one of the lower classifications in professional baseball.
As a cost-savings measure, Major League Baseball recently made a decision to eliminate some minor league teams. The announcement in September was the first move in that direction. Now, instead of having professional players on the rosters, the Appalachian League teams will be stocked with college players who won’t be paid.
That might be an issue for leagues like the Valley Baseball League, an 11-team organization that runs from June to August. With teams in both Staunton and Waynesboro, the Valley League is home to college players looking for additional experience during the summer.
Now, the Appalachian League, which has three teams based in Virginia, is set to attract approximately 320 college players, some of whom may have otherwise ended up playing in the Valley.
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According to a press release from Major League Baseball, the Appalachian League will feature rising college freshmen and sophomores playing a 54-game regular-season schedule that would begin in the summer of 2021.
“It’s fairly cut and dry who they’re targeting,” said Waynesboro general manager Tyler Hoffman. “Honestly, I think their biggest rival is going to be the Cape because most of those kids aren’t draft eligible and that’s kind of what the Cape does.”
The Cape is the Cape Cod League, generally regarded as the top summer collegiate league in the country.
The Valley is usually ranked in the top 10 of summer leagues, of which there are more than 30. As Hoffman pointed out, the players the Valley goes after are not the same ones as the Cape and probably won’t be the same ones as the Appalachian.
Waynesboro’s 2019 roster — there was no baseball in the Valley League this past summer because of COVID-19 — was made up of 66.7% juniors and seniors. Staunton had 53.8% juniors and seniors on its roster that year.
Lance Mauck, the Staunton Braves’ team president, also believes there’s another reason the Valley will be fine.
“I think the majority of our league are mid-level draft guys as opposed to top-round draft guys,” he said, referring to the Major League Baseball Draft. Mauck believes the Appalachian League will target the higher rated players for its teams.
“Obviously, however, there is a trickle down effect,” Hoffman said, meaning that if the Appalachian League takes players who would have been in the Cape, the Cape needs to somehow fill its rosters. So players who may have been in the Valley could end up in the Cape or another higher rated summer league.
“I don’t believe it’s in direct competition with us,” Hoffman said. “But they are, at the end of the day, in the same business as us if you want to put it that way.”
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At one point, last November, well before this announcement, there were rumors that Bristol and Danville, members of the Appalachian League, might just be cut loose entirely by Major League Baseball. This decision at least saves those teams, and the league, but the product will certainly be a different one.
Mauck said he’s baffled by MLB’s decision.
“I don’t know why we can’t fund minor league baseball,” he said, “but now, all of a sudden, we’re going to fund this league for college baseball.”
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