Charley Walters: Twins-Saints partnership talks quietly ongoing

[bighat]

 

A long time ago Madison had a low A ball team, the Muskies. Was affiliated with Oakland and had Conseco, that good shortstop and several other of the great A's from the late 80's.  

 

Team never made a penny and after several years was sold and moved to Michigan. Owned a small piece of that team and to be honest, we probably could have done a better job of marketing and managing the team. 

Interesting! I was going to mention the Muskies but I thought it would almost be too obscure for the discussion (silly me, of course there's someone here who knows about the Muskies).

 

In my experience, Madison's a tough market for anything due to the incredibly popular university sports scene there. There's little room for anything else, I remember the Madison Mad Dogs arena football (or were they in the Indoor Football League?) and I covered a game or two of theirs as well. Again, just no room for them.

 

With the Badgers losing their baseball team due to some Title IX reorganizing, and with the city continuing to grow, you'd think there would be some wiggle room for baseball there - but there just hasn't been.

[rdehring]

 

Interesting! I was going to mention the Muskies but I thought it would almost be too obscure for the discussion (silly me, of course there's someone here who knows about the Muskies).

 

In my experience, Madison's a tough market for anything due to the incredibly popular university sports scene there. There's little room for anything else, I remember the Madison Mad Dogs arena football (or were they in the Indoor Football League?) and I covered a game or two of theirs as well. Again, just no room for them.

 

With the Badgers losing their baseball team due to some Title IX reorganizing, and with the city continuing to grow, you'd think there would be some wiggle room for baseball there - but there just hasn't been.

Having been involved with both the Badger hockey and football teams back when, certainly understand that the Badgers own the market. Heck, that was true even when the football team was awful all those years back in the 70's.

 

I know there has been talk of getting Badger baseball back as they are the only BIG school without it. But that isn't going to happen as long as Barry is AD. Add the financial problems all Ath Depts are having right now, the only changes we are going to see in the next few years is schools cutting sports rather than adding.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

If not St Paul, what makes sense for the Twins AAA club?

[jorgenswest]

 

Ticket price would be higher, it doesn’t mean they won’t pay it.

The SCSU Men’s Hockey Team draws 6,000 per game. The UND men’s hockey team draws 10,000 per game, NDSU draws 5500 per men’s hockey game. They draw in people from outside the city itself.

Sure, different sports, but similar demographic to own sport season tickets. Prices for the tickets are similar, and number of games played are slightly shorter in hockey, but still 50 game season.

The St Cloud Rox was the AAA affiliate for the Twins in the 70s for a few years.

Thanks for the reminder about St. Cloud baseball. It was fun to have an affiliate in Minnesota. Dave Goltz, George Mitterwald and Steve Brye played for St. Cloud. It was a short season team similar to Elizabethton.  
 

Adding the Saints to AA would be beneficial to both the Twins and St. Paul.

[Major League Ready]

 

Respectfully, no way. The median AAA team averages about 6,900 attendance per game. To match that, 5% of the population of Fargo-Moorhead or 10% of the population of St. Cloud would have to go to EVERY game. Moreover, the ticket price would be significantly higher because Northwoods League players are not paid.

 

There are MiLB teams in towns smaller than St. Cloud.  The population of the draw area is what matters and St. Cloud would draw from all of Stearns, Sherburne, Wright, and Benton counties.  Obviously, they would also draw beyond that area to a lesser degree as well. 

 

Fargo Moorhead has a significant regional draw. I would guess either city would do just fine but St. Paul seems like a great plan to me.

[Nine of twelve]

 

There are MiLB teams in towns smaller than St. Cloud.  The population of the draw area is what matters and St. Cloud would draw from all of Stearns, Sherburne, Wright, and Benton counties.  Obviously, they would also draw beyond that area to a lesser degree as well. 

 

Fargo Moorhead has a significant regional draw. I would guess either city would do just fine but St. Paul seems like a great plan to me.

Either city would probably do just fine for Low-A but travel to and from the rest of the franchises in the Midwest League rules that out.

[Melissa]

I would simply LOVE having the Twin AAA affiliate at CHS. Call them the St Paul Saints, too. I would definitely attend some games there (more than I do now) be cuz the baseball would be better and all the rest that people say (esp. prospects). I would hope that they would coordinate schedules not to conflict too much with Twins MLB games.