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Old Wed May 17, 2006, 06:04pm
Sal Giaco Sal Giaco is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2001
Posts: 304
Tim,
The Minor League system will start over and all of the leagues from Rookie to AA will be turned over to Regional Assignors throughout the country. They will work with the League Presidents to provide umpires as independent contractors (similar to the assignments we get for college baseball).

The AMLU will eventually dissolve and the guys will come back individually, working games at all levels (except AAA) according to what's available around where you live. They will have to go through their regional assignor to get games but I'm sure they will get first crack at whatever they want since they are the most experienced/qualified to work those games. The big jump will probably be from A/AA to AAA, or when you go from being an independent contractor working within a certain geographical area to being a full time AAA umpire with an outside chance at working in the bigs.

As for AAA, I think that will be handled under the MLB umbrella since they are trying to develop them to eventually become big league umpires. All the current AAA umpires will be offered their jobs back, however, at MiLB terms, not AMLU terms. Most of them will probably take it since they are so close to the bigs - they'd be dumb not to come back.

This is just my opinion - I have no inside info but it seems like this is the most logical solution since MiLB just doesn't want to spend the money on umpring. Moreover, with the next five slots in the bigs are going to Hallion, Davidson, Hickox and then probably Barksdale, Guccione and/or Drake, there just isn't enough room for movement in the next 5 - 10 yrs.
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