Wednesday, August 6, 2008

I'll Be Back Before You Know It

In my last post I wrote about guys back in the major leagues this season after two or more years out of the league. Now I want to write about ex-major leaguers toiling away in independent ball.

Looking at the active rosters of all the teams in the eight independent leagues operating this season in the United States and Canada, I found ninety-nine players who have appeared in the major leagues. They might not all be playing to get back to the majors during their playing career (some are player-coaches), but they show up in the baseball encyclopedias and that's good enough for me.

From the leagues with the fewest ex-MLB players to the league with the most, here are where ex-major leaguers go to continue their careers. Players are listed with their years in MLB in parentheses.

Continental Baseball League (0 ex-MLB players)

Frontier League (0 ex-MLB players)

United Baseball League (1 ex-MLB players)
Can-Am League (4 ex-MLB players)
American Association (7 ex-MLB players)
Northern League (11 ex-MLB players)
Golden Baseball League (18 ex-MLB players)
Atlantic League (58 ex-MLB players)
Obviously, the bulk of ex-major leaguers flock to the Atlantic League. This makes sense since there are a lot of MLB franchises around the Atlantic League's territory and players get a lot of exposure. Plus, the more former major leaguers there are playing, the more chances you get to show you can beat near-MLB competition.

Keep in mind that these are players showing up on rosters right now. This list doesn't include any players who were released by indy league teams or signed by major league organizations earlier this summer.

Finally, I'm all in favor of putting cows in your team's logo, but when your nickname is the T-Bones and you've got a presumably live (cartoon) cow representing your team it doesn't seem to inspire much confidence in your team's ability to avoid being slaughtered by the competition. :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Don't forget the managers! Who's in the minor league boonies who used to be an MLB big cheese? It's just as hard to go from charter planes to the buses as the other way around.