Milwaukee Brewers Choose San Antonio Missions As New Triple-A Affiliate

The Milwaukee Brewers have finally decided who their Triple-A affiliate will be next season, and it’s down in San Antonio.

The San Antonio Missions announced earlier on Tuesday that they have agreed to a Player Development Contract with the Milwaukee Brewers for the next two years as the Crew’s Triple-A affiliate.

The Missions have been a Double-A team for years, most recently with the San Diego Padres, but the Elmore Sports Group, which owns the Missions is moving their Triple-A franchise, which was the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, to San Antonio.

The Brewers stick with the same ownership group that they dealt with in Colorado Springs, but they’ve finally moved the team outside of the terrible conditions in Colorado as the high elevation stunted the development of many pitching prospects.

This now puts the Milwaukee Brewers’ three highest affiliates in the American South/Southeast. The Double-A team is in Biloxi, Mississippi and the High-A club is in Zebulon, North Carolina.

Benefits To San Antonio

Well they’re out of the high elevation. San Antonio is going to be a lot more neutral for the Brewers pitching prospects and won’t artificially boost the stats of some of the young hitters the Crew has. This should allow a more accurate understanding of how the players are performing.

Drawbacks To San Antonio

The Missions were a Double-A team for years, and because of that, they have Double-A level accommodations. They’re trying to build a new ballpark in downtown San Antonio, but have been met with resistance so far, although it’s still possible they build that new park.

They’re looking to renovate their current park with an improved clubhouse and batting cages.

But the ballpark situation is eerily similar to Nashville several years ago. The Brewers stuck with the Sounds in a terrible ballpark for years, and once they finally built their brand new downtown stadium, they kicked the Brewers to the curb and left the Crew to sign with Colorado Springs.

The Brewers seem to have a good working relationship with the Elmore Sports Group so hopefully something like that won’t happen again.

Why Not Other Options?

This is a much better situation than some of the other alternatives. The two other Triple-A teams without affiliations for next year are Fresno and Nashville. Fresno is all the way out in California and is much farther away than the Brewers probably would like. The stadium situation out there isn’t that great either.

For Nashville, the Sounds may have completely burned their bridges with the Milwaukee Brewers after they dumped them a few years ago. The front office was very upset with Nashville about how it went down and it’s entirely possible that Stearns didn’t want to go back there and he didn’t want Fresno either. That leaves San Antonio as the best option.

Both the Nationals and Rangers, the two teams who still need Triple-A teams are reportedly battling over Nashville and both prefer them as their top option. Instead of getting into that bidding war, the Brewers simply took San Antonio, even though they were widely expected to go to the Rangers.

This is good news for Brewers fans. San Antonio is a wonderful city and isn’t a bad vacation destination should anyone decide to go and watch the Triple-A team. Landing San Antonio might have been the best situation for the Brewers to be in during this year’s carousel of Triple-A affiliates.

The Brewers only signed a two year contract with the Missions, and they could be looking for a new affiliate once again in 2020. But this relationship could last awhile.