Rangers Optimistic About Resolution In High Desert

PHOENIX—The Rangers will field a high Class A team this year. That much is certain. Where its games will be played, however, is not.

The Adelanto, Calif., city council and Main Street Baseball, the owners of the High Desert Mavericks, the Rangers’ high Class A affiliate in the California League, are locked in an increasingly ugly power struggle.

Recently, the council voted to reverse the city’s lease with Main Street Baseball, for which it paid $1 a year for the use of Heritage Field, the Mavericks’ home park.

Heller, the CEO of Main Street Baseball, claims the city’s tactics are illegal.

“What they’re really saying is they have the unilateral right to terminate a legally binding contract between the city of Adelanto and a private business,” Heller told the San Bernardino (Calif.) Sun on March 19.

“City officials are basically saying, ‘We don’t like your contract so we’ve decided to terminate it, and we want you to pay us back what we think we would have made during the time you’ve been here.’”

The city’s position appears to be that because it has declared a fiscal crisis, Adelanto and its taxpayers should not be on the hook for all of the costs that come with a minor league season. Those burdens include field maintenance, electricity, water and gas.

With the Mavericks’ Opening Day a little more than two weeks away, the loggerhead has created more than a little uneasiness about what the season will hold for the team.

Mike Daly, the Rangers’ farm director, is confident there will be baseball in High Desert this season.

“The latest that we’ve heard is that we’re working through the process. I know that Main Street, the ownership group led by Dave Heller, is very much committed to baseball there in Adelanto,” Daly said on Monday at the Rangers’ complex.

“He’s kept us updated, but that’s mainly been something that Main Street and Dave have been working through in the legal system to get rectified and make sure we’re able to play there during the season. Our expectation is that we’re going to play at Adelanto on April 7 when the season opens, and that’s what we’re planning to do at this time.”

Heller and co-owner Jim Coufos, for their part, wrote an open letter to the team’s fans on Jan. 26 and posted it on the team’s Web site. The letter, in part, attempted to explain the city’s case against the Mavericks and read as follows.

“The City’s argument, which is that the team ‘serves no public purpose,’ is undermined by the recitals agreed to by the City in the lease itself, which state that the City’s lease agreement with the Mavericks ‘is mutually beneficial,’ and that ‘the team has become an integral part of the City and the region.'”

There will be a high Class A Rangers team in 2016. In fact, the team is likely to be stocked with talented arms, including righthanders Dillon Tate and Luis Ortiz (the organization’s last two first-round picks), righty Ariel Jurado and lefthander Brett Martin. Promising catching prospect Jose Trevino and smooth shortstop Michael De Leon should join them, too.

With so little time between now and the start of the minor league season, the only realistic option if the courts were to rule that Adelanto’s action were viable would be a team that spent its season solely on the road, much like the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees did in 2012.

Still, Daly and the Rangers are confident things between the team and the city will smooth out before then.

“Our expectations are we’re going to be in Adelanto. I think you always kind of throw around some ideas of what possibly could happen,” Daly said, “but just in our conversations with Dave and Main Street Baseball, they feel very confident that things are going to be able to get worked out with our contract and that the court system will continue to rule in favor of Main Street Baseball and Dave Heller.”