NO MORE SLACK IN THE SYSTEM

The in domestic minor leagues creates consternation for farm directors

- JJ COOPER

There will be 450 fewer roster spots in the domestic minor leagues in 2024 than there were a year ago.

It will be easy to miss the change. Teams will still field five U.S. minor league teams, one Rookie complex affiliate and four full-season clubs. The change means that teams will go from having 36 to 33 rosterable

players per team. Since Triple-A and Double-A teams are limited to 28 active players and Class A clubs are limited to 30, how big of a deal is it to have the number of non-active players reduced?

For a lot of coaches and front office officials, it’s huge. “All 30 farm directors, the first thing and last thing we do each day is

(figure out) ‘do we have enough bodies?’ This is going to make that part of the day tougher,” one farm director said. “You want to make sure you’re covered every night. It will get tougher.”

MLB this year reduced the number of active minor league players an organization can have under contract from 180 to 165. The 15-player reduction applies to organizations’ domestic minor league rosters and does not include Dominican Summer League players.

Even the old limit of 180 players, which was enacted in 2021, was a dramatic change from the previous model. Before the pandemic, an organization could effectively roster as many minor league players as it wanted by adding affiliates—and thus roster spots—to its farm system.

The Yankees in 2019, for example, had four minor league clubs below the full-season level: two Rookie-level Gulf Coast League affiliates, one in the Rookie-advanced Appalachian League and a fourth in the short-season New York-Penn League. Today, the Yankees are permitted only one such domestic short-season club, their Florida Complex League affiliate.