Why do some teams have more minor league affiliations than others?

[Baldkin]

http://www.milb.com/milb/info/affiliations.jsp

 

I feel as though this is allowing one team a competitive advantage that another (poorer) team might not have. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like the Yankees have 3 rookie ball teams, where as the Brewers have only one.

[MadThinker88]

http://www.baseball-reference.com/register/affiliate.cgi?year=2016

 

Yankees are only team with 8 minor league affiliates.

Another 9 or so have 7 affiliates.

Rest have 6 affiliates.

 

I believe having more affiliates does give those teams a long term competitive edge, but there is nothing in the rules against it.

 

I think the "small market" teams would be wise to get to at least 7 affiliates

[zjl3]

I actually heard a speech from a former minor league player, and he said that the Yankees strategy was to acquire talent (they need players to fill out all their teams) as opposed to developing talent. Basically the Yankees play the numbers game: if we have enough players in our system, then surely some of those guys will become good.

[1992casey]

http://www.baseball-reference.com/register/affiliate.cgi?year=2016

 

Yankees are only team with 8 minor league affiliates.

Another 9 or so have 7 affiliates.

Rest have 6 affiliates.

 

I believe having more affiliates does give those teams a long term competitive edge, but there is nothing in the rules against it.

 

I think the "small market" teams would be wise to get to at least 7 affiliates

The Yankees have ten affiliates. They have one at every level, plus second teams in the Gulf Coast and Dominican Summer leagues.

 

It seems that every team has at least seven affiliations, but neither site linked to in this topic makes accurate counting easy. Some choose between short-season A and advanced rookie affiliations while a number of teams have both. Neither of these levels currently has enough teams to go around. There are 22 short-season A teams, and the advanced rookie level has 18 teams.

[MadThinker88]

But all MLB teams have only 4 full season affiliates.. 1 AAA, 1 AA, 1 high A and 1 Low A.

[bork]

Whatever happened to the talk a few years ago about minor league changes? I believe the Pioneer league would become a short season league, so each MLB team would have a SS team. Appalachian league would be independent and them every team would have an extended spring training team.

[JohnBriggs12]

There used to be a time when it was not all that uncommon for organizations to loan excess players to affiliates of other organizations needing players to fill out a roster.

[1992casey]

Yeah, sending players on loan to another team's affiliate used to happen with relative frequency. The last time I recall it happening was preceding the last expansion, when the expansion teams had some AAA players but didn't have AAA affiliates. The year before the last expansion, one of the "stars" of the Brewers' AAA team belonged to the Diamondbacks.