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Originally Posted by JIGGY
I agree that there are dollars and sense at work here, I disagree that MiLB doesn't care at all about the quality of umpires they put on their fields long term. They care because the players care, the managers care, and most importantly the Farm Directors care. This is the very essence of the ambiguous relationship between MLB and MiLB. It could be argued that MiLB is holding out and allowing this circus of scabs not just to break the AMLU but also MLB, a sort of backdoor way to press the issue of funding from MLB for umpire development. (for all of you who will want to chime in and give a history of the UDP and MLB's funding of it, please don't. I am well aware, that's my point.) If MLB again began dumping money into umpire development, MiLB and more specifically PBUC and the AMLU wouldn't seem so far opposed.
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I didn't know that MLB was funding UDP. Did they stop when UDP became PBUC?? MLB is ultimately the one that benefits from umpire development so I think they should be the ones to kick in the "few extra dollars" it takes to keep the umpiring system going at the MiLB level. The problem is, according to one big league umpire who I spoke to regarding this, MLB is yet to realize the importance of umpire development - even at the big league level they are reluctant to fund the resources necessary to make more improvements