To the untrained eye, this week’s sale of the MLB Draft League’s Trenton Thunder to Diamond Baseball Holdings (DBH) elicits little more than a shoulder shrug. Since their launch in 2021, the Thunder are the 49th time that DBH has gobbled up, making such news rather numbing around minor league business circles.

However, this sale differs than the previous 48: the Thunder are the first unaffiliated club to be part of the DBH sphere. Now, the Draft League occupies a weird sphere in which they’re sort-of part of MLB, but definitely not, and are sort-of independent, but also sort-of a summer collegiate league. They’re truly a 1-of-1 league in the baseball landscape, but at the end of the day, none of their six clubs are MLB affiliates. Period.

Based on the fact that the Trenton Thunder are one of those clubs, this sale is notable based on what it could signal going forward.

What is Diamond Baseball Holdings’ End Game?

That’s the million-dollar question that even employees of their own teams don’t seem to have a great answer for. But we do know this: DBH has prioritized facility upgrades, maximizing usage of their teams’ ballparks, and has recently pivoted to real estate development around multiple ballparks home to their teams.

DBH has also shown that if they don’t get what they want in a ballpark from one city, they’re willing to find someone else willing to cut the check for a nicer venue. Last year, two teams of theirs (Mississippi Braves and Down East Wood Ducks) pulled up stakes and moved to Columbus, Georgia and Spartanburg, South Carolina. This year, the DBH-owned Modesto Nuts shifted to Ontario, California. All three relocations resulted in a new ballpark (Columbus heavily rebuilt a hundred-year-old facility to the point where it’s effectively brand-new).

With Trenton in the fold, it is now worth looking out towards Binghamton, New York, where a fellow DBH club, the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, occupy a 35-year-old ballpark needing work in a shrinking market…and just finished last in Double-A in attendance.

Meanwhile, Trenton’s ballpark is only a few years older, but Trenton is a larger market and much healthier club, leading the Draft League in attendance each of their five years in the circuit…and they’re currently in the midst of $25 million in renovations.

Worth noting: the original MiLB contraction list from the fall of 2019 had Binghamton on the list, but not Trenton (the Somerset Patriots jumping from the Atlantic League to the Eastern League, bumping Trenton, seemed to be off everyone’s radar). All signs point to this sale, plus the work going on in Trenton, was made with the full intention of bringing the Thunder back to affiliated baseball—likely at Binghamton’s expense.

Where Does the American Association Fit In?

On the surface, this transaction has nothing to do with independent baseball. The Thunder spurned the Atlantic and Frontier Leagues from the start in 2020. I have no reason to think that changes at all. Maybe when it’s all said and done, a Frontier League team ends up in Binghamton (I think we instead see a Draft League flip like what Aberdeen and Frederick pulled off this year), but I don’t see that directly leading to any chain reaction that reaches the Midwest.

However, if DBH orchestrates the move of Binghamton’s Double-A club to Trenton, that could set the precedent for a similar situation with one of the American Association’s tentpole franchises: the Kane County Cougars.

Similar to Trenton, Kane County was a surprise omission from the post-COVID Minor League Baseball landscape, with only the last-minute approval of a brand-new ballpark for the then-Beloit Snappers (now Sky Carp) sparing that franchise instead.

Now, the Cougars have a steeper path back to affiliation than Trenton. Northwestern Medicine Field opened in 1991 and would need considerable work to meet MiLB facility standards. There are no rumblings about renovations and the last meaningful proposal for upgrades I can find was from 2018 (and those didn’t go anywhere).

Furthermore, the Cougars have already been sold…to REV Entertainment, who unlike DBH is fully immersed in independent baseball, also owning the Cleburne Railroaders, Long Island Ducks, and the nearby Schaumburg Boomers. There also isn’t a clear team in the Midwest League (the Cougars’ old affiliated league) that could be axed in favor of Kane County.

Of course, in 2019 I doubt many people expected Minor League Baseball to look drastically different now compared to them, with one group owning 49 teams (and 42 fewer teams in operation overall). Could REV decide they want to push one (or multiple) clubs of theirs into affiliated ball? Possibly. Maybe the Cougars are off the table, but could DBH eye a purchase of the similarly-successful Chicago Dogs (and their much-newer park) as a possible affiliated target? Or maybe MLB finally expands and now eight more MiLB clubs are needed and all bets are off?

At the end of the day, does Trenton being sold to Diamond Baseball Holdings affect the American Association? Not in the near term…but it may have planted a seed that could somewhere down the line.

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