Baseball Advanced Media To Take Over Minor League Player of the Week

MAJOR BLOGS - www.majorblogs.net - Players of the Week, which have been selected by each league through its own process, will be streamlined into the MiLB.com system for all leagues by Baseball Advanced Media (BAM), sources within several leagues have told MLN.

The practice was initiated in some leagues towards the end of last season.

What is significant about who makes the selection?  The focus of MiLB.com has changed since BAM, the holding company of Major League Baseball, has taken over the website, from a focus on the teams in the local markets to a focus on the prospect thread that leads to the major leagues.

The concern that a couple of media department heads in the Eastern League expressed to me is that guys like Brett Harper, who put up big numbers in the closing days of the  season after coming off a long rehab from injury, might not find their way into POW honors because their age or injury status don't make them prime candidates for an immediate march on a major league career.

"There are guys who are 34-35 years old who have a great week that are getting passed up for guys with lesser numbers but more of a future," said on Triple-A media head. "The guy with the better numbers was always [Player of the Week],  but if you don't fit [the MiLB] profile, they don't want you." 

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BAM continued its lobbying for 100% move of all digital content of the minor league teams to its system. Meeting in locations not on the general schedule, and hitting the league public relations meetings were augmented with some good old-fashioned arm-twisting of the hold outs.

Reaction from those hold-outs was fairly consistent. Said one GM: "We make good money off of our website. Why should I share it with them?"  A sentiment that was echoed by another, who said, "I won't make a change if it doesn't make economic sense for us to do so."  Still another GM was concerned about the shift in the content away from his club: "We want the kind of flavor on our internet site that attracts our fans to our product, not what attracts people to move into the Minor League Baseball site."