As the office of the Commissioner has seemingly used the extenuating circumstances of the coronavirus to implement changes to the game that are wildly unpopular with fans, MLB’s takeover of minor league baseball has been a long-running saga underpinning the whole story. The most attention-grabbing story of these changes has obviously been the effort to pare down the minor leagues to 120 teams, leaving each major league team with only four minor league affiliates.
However, accomplishing that task isn’t as simple as just axing a few affiliates and calling it a day. It will also take a bit of shuffling to optimize the attendance and revenues for each team.