The Philadelphia Phillies have stepped in to help assure that Coca-Cola Park has enough funding to receive the necessary upgrades that will allow the Triple-A IronPigs to remain in the Lehigh Valley moving forward.
“We are thrilled to invest in the Lehigh Valley and Coca-Cola Park,” Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said in a statement. “Lehigh Valley is our long-term home for our Triple-A players, and we want their experience to rival that of our Major League players in Philadelphia. With the public support from Lehigh County and others, along with the IronPigs’ commitment, together we’ll have the best Minor League facility in the country.”
Ahead of the 2021 season, Major League Baseball drastically overhauled Minor League Baseball, taking a more active role in the pipeline to the big leagues.
J.J. Cooper of Baseball America noted all the standards that MLB was requiring Minor League stadiums to meet before the start of the 2023 season, including clubhouse and training room expansion, female staff locker rooms, improvement of stadium lighting and the addition of batting/pitching tunnels.
Back in June, IronPigs general manager Kurt Landes told Stephanie Sigafoos of 91.3 WLVR that the franchise had secured $5.7 million “in either committed funds, or funds that have been requested.” On top of that, the organization planned to commit $1.5 million, giving them around $7.2 million in hand.
However, because of “spiraling costs and inflation,” $9.5 million was the estimated amount of money needed to bring the stadium, which opened in 2008, up to the standards MLB was asking for.
Lehigh County made large investments in the stadium upgrades, pledging “up to $3 million” in October, on top of a prior investment of $1.5 million. However, the Allentown City Council voted against using $1.5 million of the money it had received from the American Rescue Plan Act towards stadium upgrades a few weeks later.
While it’s not disclosed exactly how much money the Phillies are putting towards helping upgrade Coca-Cola Park, it’s clear that they didn’t want to see the team leave the Lehigh Valley.
Allentown has built a great following since it became the host city of the organization’s Triple-A affiliate. There are obvious advantages in having your Triple-A team play less than 80 miles away, whether it be how quickly players can get from Triple-A to the majors if called up, or how easy it is for executives to monitor top prospects.
Even Scranton/Wilkes-Barre — which was the Triple-A home for the Phillies organization from 1989 to 2006 — is 135 miles away from Citizens Bank Park.
From a logistical sense, Allentown is the perfect place for the top minor-league affiliate of the Phillies to play at.
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