While many of us enjoyed the Buffalo Bisons of 2004 Cleveland Indians dispatch the New York Yankees in four games in the ALDS, I got to thinking how a long and productive era in Bisons history might be coming to an end after the next season. That’s when affiiliation agreements between MLB teams and MiLB teams expire, and the conventional wisdom is that the Cleveland Indians will be pairing up with Columbus as the Clippers open their spanking new downtown ballpark. Cleveland might be looking to tap the Columbus market as they regionalize their franchise, as well as establish their branding on the regional sports network Sportstime Ohio.

So should the Indians bid good bye to Buffalo, who will the be our new parent club come 2009? While there was a time when teams would come courting the Bisons, a perfect storm of events could happen that incredibly could leave Buffalo left with table scraps.

The big elephant in the room is the New York Mets, and when the last version of musical chairs happened two years ago, the Mets were dispatched to New Orleans in the PCL, and that has been a nightmare for the team. It would make a lot of sense for the Mets to come to Buffalo. But suprise, surprise. It is Syracuse who is making the big push to land the Mets. The hideous astroturf at Alliance Bank Stadium will soon be history as natural turf is being installed. The Chief’s long affiliation with the Blue Jays is wearing thin after a long string of losing seasons. And as the linked article says, the entire Syracuse baseball hierarchy is excited at the prospect of going after the Mets.

So if Cleveland bolts for Columbus, and the Mets end up off the board and heads to Syracuse, Buffalo’s next choice would then be the Pittsburgh Pirates, who at one time was Buffalo’s parent club. Pirates GM Neal Huntington knows the Buffalo team well, having once worked with the Indians farm system. The Bucs are now hooked up with Indianapolis, so what if they end up staying put?

That would leave the Toronto Blue Jays, which makes geographic sense but would offer little synergy between the two cities for several reasons. Additionally, one only needs to look at the record of the Jays’ farmhands at AAA in recent seasons and that does not inspire confidence.

Then of course, the Washington Nationals, who would be displaced from Columbus, would also be available, and would certainly want to stay in the International League.

One thing is for sure… there will be a two week window next September where any official franchise shifts will take place. But the quiet jockeying for position will begin months earlier, and hopefully the Bisons will be the team up to the task of choosing its own destiny.

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