Fresno Grizzlies
- Location: Fresno, CA
- League: Pacific Coast League 1998-2019; Low-A West 2021; California League 2022-
- Affiliation: San Francisco Giants 1998-2014; Houston Astros 2015-2018; Washington Nationals 2019; Colorado Rockies 2021-present
- Ballpark: Pete Beiden Field 1998-2001; Chukchansi Park 2002-present
Team History[edit]
The Fresno Grizzlies, of the Single-A California League, briefly in Low-A West, and formerly of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, went from the top tier of Minor League Baseball to the bottom in less than a decade. The Colorado Rockies farmhands play their home games at Chukchansi Park in Fresno, CA.
The fall included dropping from a secure affiliation to first a short-term fill-in and then a forced pairing that may have changed the face of the Majors-minors relationship.
The franchise returned top-tier affiliated baseball to Fresno in 1998 for the first time in more than 90 years. Four years later, the Grizz moved into a brand-new stadium - the only four-level ballpark in the minors - and soon landed a naming rights deal with the Chukchansi Tribe that paid them more than a million dollars a year to promote its casino. The club arrived as a San Francisco Giants' affiliate, renewing a lower-level pairing that lasted 30 seasons, and seemed securely so going into the 2013-2014 affiliation cycle.
Then the bottom fell out. Early in the 2014 season, rumors surfaced that the Giants might drop the Grizzlies for the Sacramento River Cats. The Grizz even took the unusual step of putting out a statement[1] trying to influence the Giants as the period to switch affiliations began that September. The Giants did indeed hook up with the Cats, though, and the Grizz ended up with the Houston Astros.
Just a month later, an internal Chukchansi tribal dispute led to a federal raid and shutdown of the casino - freezing the rights income stream for more than a year. That seems permanently resolved, as the tribe signed with the Grizz for another 10 seasons during the 2021-2022 off-season.
Adding to the turmoil, the Grizz/Astros partnership was predictably temporary. The Astros and much closer Round Rock Express were clearly interested in each other, but the Express at that point had two years left on their player development contract with the Texas Rangers. When both the Houston-Fresno and Texas-Round Rock contracts expired after the 2016 season, the Astros jumped aboard the Express. The system then in place, like a cross between dominoes and musical chairs, often ended with unattached teams in a level. The system's solution was to "pair" such teams - and in this case that threw together two teams that were separated by a continent: Fresno and the Washington Nationals. That may have been the last straw that led MLB to junk the system when its contract with Minor League Baseball, the Professional Baseball Agreement, ran out in September 2020.
The decade wasn't totally bad; the Grizz won the 2015 Triple-A National Championship and saw their three different parents win five different World Series crowns in the 2010s.
Also in 2015, the Grizz started hosting Fresno's annual "Taco Truck Throwdown" - changing their nickname for the day to Tacos. Their first event went fully viral and is often credited with starting a wave of food-based alternate-brand promotions that has become a fixture in the minors. The Grizz were the first to go as far as temporarily changing their nickname to a food-based one - something that has become almost routine since - but they admit being inspired by the Lehigh Valley IronPigs' introduction of a bacon-based baseball cap.[2]
Those bright spots would be followed by another blow delivered in MLB's 2021 Minor League Reorganization. Three California League ballparks had become more and more of a problem over the years. Minor League Baseball had erased Stater Bros. Stadium in Adelanto and Sam Lynn Ballpark in Bakersfield by, in effect, transferring the High Desert Mavericks and the Bakersfield Blaze franchises to the Carolina League after the 2016 campaign. That left Lancaster - like Stater, a notoriously hitter-friendly ballpark that distorted statistics and damaged pitchers' confidence. Almost daily play in multi-day series effectively requires an even number of teams in a league, and ultimately MLB hit upon ousting Lancaster and evening the circuit by dropping Fresno from Triple-A to the now Low-A Cali - known as Low-A West that first year - from the top to the bottom, the largest shift of any team in the entire reshuffle. It also moved them into the Rockies' farm system.
There is a wrinkle in determining who moved to Fresno in the Expansion of 1998. Technically, the Phoenix Firebirds made that move, but those Firebirds had undergone a change the previous off-season: The owners of the Firebirds and the Tucson Toros swapped their franchises, so the Firebirds who moved to Fresno in 1998 had been the 1997 Toros.
The Grizzlies play Copa de la Diversión Hispanic engagement campaign games as the Lowriders de Fresno.
Year-by-Year Record[edit]
Further Reading[edit]
- Chris Landers: "Let the Fresno Grizzlies take you back in time with their spectacular Kris Kross uniforms", "Cut 4", mlb.com, April 21, 2017. [3]
Related Sites[edit]
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