Beloit Snappers
- Location: Beloit, WI
- League: Midwest League 1995-2019; High-A Central 2021
- Affiliation: Milwaukee Brewers 1995-2004; Minnesota Twins 2005-2012; Oakland Athletics 2013-2019; Miami Marlins 2021
- Ballpark: Harry C. Pohlman Field (1995-2021); ABC Supply Stadium (2021)
Team History[edit]
The Beloit Snappers were a Midwest League team that barely survived MLB's 2021 Minor League Reorganization, then played one season in High-A Central before re-branding as the Beloit Sky Carp. They also spent many years in antiquated Pohlman Field before playing their last season as Snappers in brand-new ABC Supply Stadium, and seven years as an Oakland Athletics franchise before joining the Miami Marlins in the reshuffle.
The community-owned club, little concerned with profit, long risked being dropped from affiliated baseball over Pohlman's condition. After Minor League Baseball issued a March 2019 ultimatum and with Beloit reportedly on the downsize list, a 13th-hour deal - the deadline had actually passed - saved it.
Pensacola Blue Wahoos owner Quint Studer, who launched his career in nearby Janesville, WI, brokered the deal: A local real estate development firm financed and built the ballpark, a sister company named it, and Studer is the new team owner. The Snappers front office moved into a new stadium in downtown Beloit in July 2021, but the team was on the road. The first game in the new playpen was August 3rd.
"Snappers" saluted a turtle-shaped mound tribal people built on the nearby campus of Beloit College. Studer was in the process of changing it during the 2020-2021 off-season, planning to tie a new brand to the new playpen's debut, but he stepped back shortly before the season. He said MLB's 2021 Minor League Reorganization made it advantageous to re-do the rebranding with MLB input.
The downsizing raised the Snappers, and most of the MwL, one level and shifted them to the Marlins - an unlikely pairing given that the reshuffle was intended to lessen geographic distances between parent and farm teams. The odd outcome resulted from a guessing game that played out among the Oakland Athletics, Toronto Blue Jays, Lansing Lugnuts and Vancouver Canadians: The restructuring had left the Jays with two High-A teams; the A's, reasoning the Jays would drop the C's in favor of the much-closer Lugnuts, dropped Beloit so they could take Vancouver; but, because of the Jays' strong fan base on Canada's west coast, they kept the C's and the A's grabbed Lansing.
This franchise put Beloit into the MwL in 1982 and continued ever since, except the lost 2020 campaign. They played in the Milwaukee Brewers system as the Beloit Brewers through 1994, then took the Snappers name while remaining with the Brewers. In 2005, the team became an affiliate of the Minnesota Twins.
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