Coolray Field, Lawrenceville, Georgia (AAA #14 - Another beautiful lookalike minor league stadium)
To my surprise, the minor league stadiums feel more alike on the inside than the major league stadiums do.
They’re pretty much the same size, with 26 of 30 AAA parks seating between 9,000 and 12,000, while MLB stadium capacities range from the Dodgers’ 56,000 to Cleveland’s 34,600. OK, if you take the extremes of the AAA parks, the range goes from 7000 to 16,000, but there seem to be more that are nearly the same size.
Except for Tacoma’s Cheney Stadium (1960), the oldest AAA park was built in 1988. Fenway opened in 1912, Wrigley in 1914, and three more between 1962 and 1973.
Wrigley has ivy on the outfield walls, Fenway has the Green Monster, Minute Maid has the Crawford boxes, Chase has a swimming pool, Coors has evergreens over the center field wall, and it seems like there’s something unique about the outfield fence in almost every one. The outfields of the minor league parks generally have a grassy berm for children to play on in right and/or left field, and only occasionally seating in the outfield.
This is not to say that I don’t like the minor league stadiums. In fact, I like them a lot, but they just feel a bit alike.
The view beyond the outfield concourse does differ. Louisville and Des Moines have rivers in the background, and Des Moines has the Iowa state capitol (that’s one of my favorite views), and El Paso and Oklahoma City have the city skylines. Gwinnett has “luxury flats” for rent, with balconies with clear views of the ballpark. I find the luxury flats an interesting concept, as one who has a condo specifically to be within walking distance of a major league park. I wonder how the rental is going – if I lived in the Atlanta metro area, those might be my first choice in housing.
Today was another suburban Atlanta stadium, in yet another county (Gwinnett). Gwinnett is one of three AAA teams located in the same metro area as their parent team. It doesn’t seem to hurt the attendance of the Saint Paul Saints, the Twins’ top team, who finished 10th of the 30 AAA teams in attendance last year. But Sugar Land, in suburban Houston, and Gwinnett finished 28th and 30th, respectively. Today’s game had only 3072 in attendance, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
Why is HE in the minors?
I’m always fascinated by the human elements of the AAA minor leagues, the mixture of players moving up and players moving down.
It’s always exciting to see a player on the way up. Michael Busch looked like he was better than the rest of the players on the field in the two games we saw him play for the Oklahoma City Dodgers two years ago, although he had struggled in the few major league games he’d played to that point. He’s now doing well hitting in the middle of the batting order for the Chicago Cubs, who are in first in their division. I didn’t get that feeling with anyone today.
When we saw Gwinnett (the Braves’ AAA team) play a week ago, I noticed that they had four players with more than 1700 major league at bats each, two of whom (James McCann and Garrett Cooper) had been major league all-stars at some point. I wish them well, but I fear these guys are all has-beens. Their starting pitcher (Jose Suárez) today and their final relief pitcher (Dylan Covey) each has pitched in 100 or more games in the majors, starting at least six years ago. They may be in the same category, although both pitched well today.
Then there are the never-weres, guys like Jered Kelenic (wasn’t he going to be a star for the Mariners?), Jason Delay (wasn’t he going to be the Pirates’ regular catcher?), and, on the other side of the field, Andruw Monasterio (wasn’t he a hot prospect just a couple of years ago?). Those three are all young enough that they may yet make it back, and perhaps even have very good MLB careers, but we’ll see.
Then you see someone like Michael Peterson. I don’t know that I’d heard of him before today. He came in throwing 97 and 98 mph fastballs, the fastest anyone was throwing, and faster than most major league pitchers. He’s 6-foot-7, and looks to be all arms and legs, so that fastball leaves his hand a little bit closer to the plate than those 6-foot-2 guys. Just looking at his first couple of pitches when he came into the game, he looked like a prospect, and I expected him to mow the hitters down. But he gave up two runs in the one inning he pitched. Even at AAA, the hitters are good enough that if the ball doesn’t move a little bit, up or down or in or out, they’re going to hit it, even if it’s very fast, and I’m guessing his fastball is straight. Anyway, I looked up his stats. He made his major league debut last year, at age 30. He’s now pitched in 17 MLB games, for three teams over the last two seasons. I don’t think he’s going to have a long big-league career, but somehow, I’m rooting for him.
And then there’s Bryan Hudson. We saw him pitch for the Brewers last month, then they sent him down, and he pitched for their AAA team, the Nashville Sounds, in relief today. He gave up three runs, and was the losing pitcher. That’s not a good way to make it back up. I feel for him.
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