MLB Invites 120 Teams To Join Minor Leagues In 2021

On the second Wednesday in December, Major League Baseball took yet another step toward completing the most dramatic change in the minor leagues in at least half a century.

On Dec. 9, MLB invited 120 minor league teams to join its Professional Development Leagues. While there had been talks between negotiating teams from Minor League Baseball and MLB for many months, this pivotal moment, which will shape the structure of the minor leagues, was a unilateral decision. MiLB had no significant input into which teams were invited to be affiliates and which ones were not.

That appears to be by design. After months of talks, MLB made it clear it is setting up its own system. Based on feedback from minor league clubs, MLB has been willing to tweak aspects of the rules and guidelines it will use, but the structure has been set up by MLB and MLB alone.

As 2020 ended, there was no certainty that the 120 teams MLB invited would be the same 120 that take the field in 2021. To join MLB’s system, minor league teams will have to agree to sign a 10-year Professional Development License. They will also have to waive any right to sue MLB.

It’s possible some teams will balk, either by simply refusing to sign individually or by banding together as a group to attempt to get some aspects of the PDLs altered.

But nobody Baseball America talked to in the lead-up to or aftermath of the Dec. 9 invitation had any doubts that MLB will field a minor league system of its own design going forward. The questions revolve around whether it will be with the 120 teams that were invited or whether some teams will decline, in which case MLB would replace them with willing teams.