The Staten Island Yankees and three other defunct clubs lost their suit over a restructuring that ousted a quarter of MLB’s minor league affiliates from the league’s century-old farm system. Photo: Gregory Payan/AP
U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter of the Southern District of New York on Wednesday granted Major League Baseball’s motion to dismiss an antitrust suit filed by four minor league teams, finding that the league’s century-old antitrust exemption shields it from the suit.
Carter ruled that the four minor league teams—the Staten Island Yankees, the Norwich Sea Unicorns, the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes and the Tri-City ValleyCats, based in New York State’s Capital District—did establish antitrust standing and adequately plead an antitrust violation, but the baseball exemption “is a different skein of yarn.”
