Timber Rattlers Closing In On Attendance Record

Heading into today’s game against Cedar Rapids, the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers are close to breaking an attendance record that has stood since 1996:

On Saturday night, the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers attendance was 5,256 to give them a cumulative attendance of 233,393.

The current single season attendance record for the Appleton baseball franchise of 233,797 was set in 1996, the second year of Fox Cities Stadium. That record will be surpassed on Sunday.

The team is giving quite a package to the 405th person through the gates today, including a Timber Rattlers jersey, a bat autographed by the Timber Rattlers, tickets to a 2009 Milwaukee Brewers game, on-field recognition and a first pitch before Sunday’s game, a $200 Timber Rattlers Gift Card, and a VIP suite for a Timber Rattlers game in 2010 with a $200 credit for food.

The Minor Links

More good stuff about the world of minor league baseball. If you read something that belongs in The Minor Links, please do pass it along to onemoredyingquail@gmail.com.

Raul Ibanez loves “The Office”?  I think I heart Raul Ibanez (The Hog Blog)

John Sickels breaks down the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers (Minor League Ball)

Nick Hill may be a darkhorse candidate to help out the Mariners bullpen within the next year or two (U.S.S. Mariner)

Rhett Barber must have broken a mirror during his senior year of high school; fortunately, his seven years of bad luck appear to be over and he is pitching well for the Alexandria Aces (The Town Talk)

“Sugar” is being released on DVD and Blu-Ray (Baseball Musings)

Marty Popham, a pitcher for the Cleveland Indians Short Season affiliate in Mahoning Valley, pitched seven no-hit innings on Wednesday before being pulled; Austin Adams gave up an infield single with two outs in the ninth to end the no-no (Indians Prospect Insider)

Cooper Brannan lost part of his left hand in Iraq about 3 1/2 years ago; he was just released by the Padres, then caught on with the American Defenders of New Hampshire (Nashua Telegraph)

You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

I’ve learned a lot about minor league baseball this season, but the most interesting might be something I just discovered about ten minutes ago: major league teams and their minor league affiliates are like the characters on Friends* – sooner or later, they all end up dating one another.

*Yeah, Friends.  My pop culture references are so timely.  The backup example was Beverly Hills 90210.

Almost immediately after the season ended, what I’m assuming is a yearly affiliate shift began to occur.  And the more I read, the more I began to understand the tectonic nature of these relationships.  For example…

• Last Thursday, the Cleveland Indians announced that they had signed a four-year player development agreement with the International League’s Columbus Clippers .  The Clippers were Washington’s AAA affiliate for the past two seasons.
• Two days later, the Nationals signed a two-year deal the Syracuse Chiefs, also of the International League.  (Washington also extended existing deals with Class A Hagerstown and Class A Short-Season Vermont; both extensions are for two years.)
• Two days after THAT, the New York Mets signed on with Buffalo, the International League team that had been cut loose as Cleveland’s affiliate.
• In order to make the move to Buffalo, the Mets pulled out of New Orleans, clearing the way for division rival Florida to slide in for a two-year deal with the Zephyrs.
• Florida’s shift to New Orleans meant that the organization pulled out of Albuquerque, where nearly 600,000 fans passed through the gates last season.  Taking their place?  The Los Angeles Dodgers organization, which returns its AAA affiliate to the place it called home for nearly three decades.
• At the AA level, Los Angeles is returning the favor, moving from Jacksonville to Chattanooga, which allows Florida to take over the Suns franchise.  The Dodgers’ shift displaces the Reds, who were the previous tenants in Chattanooga.

Those are the major crazy, circular moves that have been announced over the past week or so.  MiLB.com has also reported on a number of other affiliate changes:

• The Carolina League’s Salem Avalanche left the Houston Astros to sign a two-year deal with the Boston Red Sox.  Boston will pull its Class A affiliate out of Lancaster, CA.  The Red Sox will be replaced, coincidentally, by the Astros, which signed a two-year deal with Lancaster.  Apparently, the circle never ends.
• The Milwaukee Brewers lost their Midwest League entry in West Virginia to the Pirates, but replaced the Power with the Class A Wisconsin Timber Rattlers.  They also extended existing PDCs with AA Huntsville and Rookie League Helena.
• The Timber Rattlers were previously affiliated with the Seattle Mariners.  Seattle will stay in the Midwest League, moving to Clinton.  Clinton was affilatied with Texas last season and became available after the Rangers moved on to North Carolina.

This is making my head hurt, and these aren’t even all the changes that were made.  I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but I just sort of stopped caring about decent sentence structure there after awhile; there are only so many ways you can say “shift” or “move”.  One thing is clear to me, however: we gots some work to do on our “MiLB Teams” page.