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Previously, I had talked about how it looked like the Yakima Bears would be moving to Vancouver, WA, potentially for the 2012 season, but stadium talks have fallen through and the Yakima Bears announced that they will not be moving for the 2012 season.  The article is over a month old, so I’m behind on this information.

They are still looking for a new home with Vancouver, WA and Milwaukie, OR both working on stadium plans.  Both cities are in the Portland, OR area, which has been without a team since the Beavers left after the 2010 season.  While it isn’t happening for next year, I think there is a pretty high likelihood that the Bears will be playing elsewhere in 2013.

The Casper Ghosts will be moving to Grand Junction, CO for the 2012 season pending a City Council vote tonight.  The Rockies bought the team last year with the intention of moving them to Grand Junction in the future.  The team will be called the Grand Junction Rockies for now, with a more permanent name selected by the 2013 season.

Casper is a rather small market and had trouble drawing fans.  There were issues with the field conditions there as well.  Grand Junction is a bigger market and a little bit closer (although it looks like the drive time is still about the same from Denver to their Pioneer League affiliate).  So it looks like Wyoming will be without affiliated baseball for now.

The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees have announced their plans of where to play their 2012 home games while their home stadium is being renovated, and it involves playing at 6 different minor league stadiums.

The AAA International League team will play 37 games in Rochester, NY, 10 games in Syracuse, NY, 8 games in Lehigh Valley, PA, 7 games in Batavia, NY, 6 games in Buffalo, NY and 4 games in Pawtucket, RI.

This is a fairly unique situation in minor league baseball since year long stadium renovations are forcing the Yankees to find a new home for 2012.  Options that had the team playing at one location for the entire season, like Ottawa or Newark, fell through and the team had no choice but to play at multiple stadiums.  Apparently, the Yankees had pretty much everything lined up to play in Newark, but the Mets vetoed the deal since it violated their territorial rights.

From the Yankees perspective, it will be good for fans to have all but 12 home games played in the state of New York, but I’m sure that the players would like to have one place to call home.

I expect that the team will still be known at the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees even though they won’t be playing a single home game in that region next year.  And as far as my quest goes, the franchise is playing some home games at other stadiums (although it’s much more than has been done in the past).  If they played the entire season out of another location, I would expect that they would change the team name and treat it like the team moved for a single season, but they really can’t do that in this case.  But we’ll see if there are any other changes as a result of this for next season.

The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees have decided to renovate their stadium in 2012, which means that the team will have to find a temporary home for the season.  Other teams have done these sorts of renovations during the offseason, but in order to keep costs down, they have chosen to do this rather than play at PNC Field (the former Lackawanna County Stadium) during the 2012 season.

Some of the potential 2012 homes for the Yankees AAA affiliate include Ottawa (last used in the International League in 2007 before the franchise moved to Lehigh Valley), Staten Island (where they would share the ballpark with the Yankees Short Season A affiliate), and Lehigh Valley (where they would share the ballpark with the Phillies AAA affiliate).

Since this is a temporary situation, I think that the most likely option will be that the team plays in Staten Island.  The ballpark holds 6500 and is operated by Mandalay Baseball, who also operates the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre team.  For the first half of the season, there would be no schedule conflicts, since the NY-Penn League doesn’t start play until mid-June.  They should be able to work through scheduling the rest of the season as the two just have to work around each other.  This would be a similar situation to 1998 when Danville hosted a Carolina League team, in addition to its Appalachian League team, prior to their move to Myrtle Beach.

The one thing I’ve been trying to figure out is if this should be considered a team move, or if it’s really the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre franchise playing elsewhere for an extended period of time.  It’s not uncommon for a team needing to play at a temporary home for a handful of games while stadium repairs are needed.  Or that a team needs to play a season in a temporary location while waiting for a stadium to be built.  But I can’t think of when in minor league baseball that a team vacated their home for a season for ballpark renovations.  The New York Yankees played in Shea Stadium in 1974 and 1975 while Yankee Stadium was renovated, but they still played the season in New York City.

From my perspective, the team will play in a stadium in another city, so it is like the team is moving for 2012, and then moving back in 2013.  So depending on where the team ends up, it may be the closest team that I haven’t seen in 2012, although they will almost definitely be playing in a stadium in which I’ve seen a game before.