A Long Time Coming: Hillsboro Hops Back In Action, Featuring A Host of Exciting Changes - Sport Oregon Voices
Sport Oregon Voices:
Professional baseball returns to the area with a new long-season format, higher classification as part of minor league restructuring
When the Hillsboro Hops took the field for their 2021 home and season opener at Ron Tonkin Field this past Tuesday, it marked their first home game in 604 days. That’s right, 604 days … more than a year and a half had passed since area baseball fans were able to see professional baseball live in their own backyard.
Their patience was rewarded, as the home-team Hops treated them to a 4-1 victory over the Everett AquaSox.
While it was so refreshing to see the Hops get back into the swing of things, so to speak, it’s nearly as remarkable to absorb all the exciting changes that have occurred since that last home game on Sept. 8, 2019.
One of the most transformational alterations for the Hops – both to the baseball and business sides – is their move to a long-season format, and a more advanced classification within the Class A level of the minor leagues. The change, brought about Major League Baseball’s substantial restructuring of its minor league model, nearly doubles the number of games played by the Hops, along with five of their familiar opponents that previously made up the Northwest League. Combined, the six teams now make up a new league, the High-A West, which will typically consist of a more refined talent pool than the previous Northwest League years. In a regular year, the league will start in April and wrap up in September, with its teams playing a 132-game season, 56 more than its previous short-season format that started up in June each year. For this season, the team will play 60 home and 60 road games, as the start of the season was delayed a bit.
The basic on-field effects of the change are obvious – more games, more baseball for area fans. But the move to the long-season format brings with it a host of new business opportunities and economies of scale for the team, and in many ways for the surrounding business community. That’s all music to the ears of everyone involved, no doubt, on the heels of having the entire 2020 minor league season wiped out by COVID.
“It’s really beneficial two-fold,” said K.L. Wombacher, president and general manager of the Hops. “One, to have more games is great. But stretching the season out, I think, is going to help us out a ton from an advertising standpoint, as now we can run kind of six-month campaigns. From a fan standpoint, we had a hard time marketing for a two-month season. You’ve got to ramp up quickly, you’ve got to sell a lot of tickets in a short amount of time, and then you blink and you miss it. And it’s during the busiest time of people’s calendars during the summer when they’re taking trips and things like that.
“It also gets us into the school year where now we can do a lot of school programs, which we haven’t been able do with kids not in school during the summer. So, there are tons of advantages going to the long-season format.”
Wombacher says the increase in number of games gives the team, and its fans, a great deal more flexibility, with the Hops offering full-season, half-season and quarter-season ticket packages. The team also has more time to sell ticket plans and sponsorship packages during the season, a marked change from the past where the nine-month offseason represented the only real opportunity to sell for the abbreviated 76-game format.
While there’s a lot of new going on this season, one thing that hasn’t changed is the team’s major league affiliation, as the Hops continue their prosperous partnership with the Arizona Diamondbacks. While the team enjoyed an eight-year run with the Diamondbacks since its debut season in Hillsboro in 2013, there is now more certainty in affiliation built into the new minor league system. In the past, teams would sign two- or four-year affiliation agreements, but now major league clubs enter into 10-year partnerships with each of its four minor league clubs. So far, the Hops’ partnership with Arizona has produced three league championships and a run of six straight seasons in the playoffs. Last we saw the Hops, they were winning the 2019 Northwest League Championship.
The more formalized partnership with Major League Baseball also presents a host of additional opportunities for each minor league club, including the use of advanced ticketing platforms, a bolstered TV presence, digital streaming rights and services, and national marketing opportunities, to name a few.
“Overall, it’s just super exciting to go from being aligned with Minor League Baseball that has a partnership with Major League Baseball, to now being right in line with Major League Baseball. The opportunities are endless,” said Wombacher. “The power that they have on a national scale, with their 30 MLB teams and now their 120 minor league teams – they’ve got 150 of the best markets in the country that they can sell to, sell against.”
In a further twist to another unusual season, the Hops have offered up their facilities and certain resources to their league rivals, the Vancouver Canadians. Much like their counterparts in the NHL, NBA and MLB, the Canadians have been forced to relocate their home base temporarily to the United States, as restrictions to non-essential travel preclude the back-and forth traversing necessitated by a professional sports schedule. The Vancouver club has taken up residence in the Hillsboro area and will play its home games when the Hops are on the road, presenting very minimal disruptions. On the flip side, the unusual situation is expected to provide a significant boost to the local economy, with an estimated 2,500 additional hotel rooms anticipated for the team’s players and the additional visiting teams coming to the area. Beyond housing, the 60 additional “home” games are sure to further impact local restaurants, grocery stores and local transportation entities, among others. It also provides baseball fans with the added bonus of 50 or so extra games to choose from.
Heading into the season, Wombacher and the Hops were fortunate that their location in Washington County hadn’t been elevated to the extreme risk COVID classification as the season commenced, meaning they were able to open its gates to fans up to 15 percent capacity to start with. In some ways the team has a bit of a cushion because of the added games this year, related to its former short-season format. But in a very real way – as they look to rebound from the economic realities of having no games last season – it’s critical that the team is able to open to greater, if not full, capacity during the summer and early fall at their home stadium, which holds approximately 5,500 fans. Team officials are hopeful that they can get to at least 50 percent capacity by the time they’d ordinarily start their season in June, with full capacity to follow later in the season. The official attendance for Tuesday’s opener was 825 fans.
Sure, there’s still a tangible degree of uncertainty surrounding the sports world, but the Hops haven’t been deterred by any challenge to date. Regardless of the number of fans able to catch their home games at any given point, they are going about producing each of their home games as if it was a full house, providing the same quality entertainment their fans have become accustomed to. The new partnership with Major League Baseball has been beneficial in additional ways, too, when factoring in the health and safety protocols already being implemented this season at the big league level. To that end, the Hops are taking all the right precautions and implementing proper safety and distancing measures to accommodate their fans as the 2021 season commences.
But looking ahead – bolstered by all the new and exciting developments to their business and for their fans – they have an eye on opening the gates to greater capacity in the near future, for everyone to enjoy a night at the ballpark and get a first-hand glimpse of their new-look Hops.
Because, after all, it’s simply been too long.
If You’re Going
For more information on individual-game tickets, group packages, and full and partial-season ticket plans, click here. To view the 2021 Hops schedule, click here.