![]() High-A Central is the Midwest League with four teams removed - the Burlington Bees and Clinton Lumberkings are going to the Prospect League while the Kane County Cougars shift to the American Associaiton filling the void left by the St. High-A West is the Northwest League minus two teams, the Boise Hawks (Pioneer League) and the Salem-Kaiser Volcanoes (Maverickes League) are both joining independent leagues. The newly named “High-A” class, which was known previously as A+, has seen a lot of shifting around as they have crammed five leagues together into three. The Mobile BayBears have relocated to Madison, Alabama and will remain in the league playing as the Rocket City Trash Pandas. The Somerset Patriots, a former member of the Independent Atlantic League joins the fun while the Trenton Thunder is left out, they’ll be joining the new MLB Draft League.įinally, the Double-A South, which is made up of Southern League teams, didn’t add any teams but did lose the Jackson Generals who are still unsure what they’ll be doing in 2021. In the Double-A Northeast one new team was added to what is essentially the old Eastern League. No teams were eliminated but two were added from Triple-A, the San Antonio Missions and the Wichita Wind Surge (previously the New Orleans Baby Cakes) both join the league as former members of the Pacific Coast League. Starting with the Double-A Central, which is the old Texas League. The Texas League, Eastern League, and Southern League all remained mostly in tact - though a couple of teams still did get the boot. Relatively speaking, the Double-A level didn’t see as much movement as the other three. One other Triple-A relocation for 2021 is the former Pawtucket Red Sox who will remain at the Triple-A level as the Worcester Red Sox. Some teams no longer at the Triple-A level include the Fresno Grizzlies who are getting the boot all the way down to Low-A, the San Antonio Missions will be sent to Double-A, and the New Orleans Baby Cakes, who relocated to Wichita for the 2020 season that never happened, will now play in Double-A as the Wichita Wind Surge. ![]() Paul Saints of the American Association joins Triple A East, and the Sugar Land Skeeters of the Atlantic League now in Triple-A West. ![]() There are also two former independent clubs here, the St. The Iowa Cubs, Memphis Redbirds, Nashville Sounds, and Omaha Storm Chasers have all been moved from the PCL to the “East”, the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp got a nice promotion from the Double-A Southern League to the Triple-A East. Overall, Triple-A East is essentially the International League and Triple-A West is the old PCL but there has been some shifting around here. The official release did not indicate these names would be used going forward, instead listing them as (I’m told, “temporary placeholder names” of) Triple-A East, and Triple-A West. We’ll start with Triple-A, which was previously split up into the International League and the Pacific Coast League. Several teams were either bumped up a level or dropped down and three previously independent-league clubs have been invited and are now affiliated with Major League clubs. The four levels will be known as Triple-A, Double-A, High-A, and Low-A with the lower three of those levels split into three regional leagues, the Triple-A level remains at just two leagues. “We are excited to unveil this new model, which not only provides a pipeline to the Majors, but continues the Minor Leagues’ tradition of entertaining millions of families in hundreds of communities”, said Major League Commissioner Rob Manfred in the official release. “In modernizing our Minor League system, we prioritized the qualities that make the Minor Leagues such an integral part of our game while strengthening how we develop professional athletes on and off the field.” Though, again, this at the cost of many teams. ![]() The new system allows the Major League teams and their Minor League affiliates to be significantly closer to each other than before, in most instances, as well as an increase in salaries to Minor League ballplayers. What was previously fourteen leagues spread out over five levels is now eleven leagues over four levels, massive re-alignments were implemented to accomodate this and sadly dozens of teams were kicked out of affiliated professional baseball. The world of Minor League Baseball was completely turned on its head last week when Major League Baseball announced a total restructering of the entire system. ![]()
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