The long-rumored and reported realignment of Minor League Baseball became official on Friday. Teams moving levels, leagues changing names and divisions getting realigned.
The White Sox are mostly untouched by these changes. After losing Great Falls as a rookie ball affiliate in November, the White Sox kept all four full-season affiliates and kept them at the same levels.
On Thursday, the Triple-A Charlotte Knights announced a 10-year agreement to remain with the White Sox.
The Knights are no longer in the International League, but rather what is currently being labeled Triple-A East. There are still two Triple-A leagues, but they aren’t being called the International League and the Pacific Coast League anymore. While the leagues will likely be branded at some point, the Knights are in the Southeast Division. Memphis and Nashville are in that division after moving from the PCL. Jacksonville moves up from Double-A. Previous league foes Gwinnett, Durham and Norfolk will remain fixtures on the Knights’ schedule.
Double-A remains a three-league level. Birmingham, the Double-A affiliate for the White Sox, will see very few changes. The Barons are in the Double-A South, which is a minor name change from the Southern League. It’s still an eight-team league and most of the teams remain the same. With Jacksonville moving up to Triple-A, the expansion Rocket City Trash Pandas (what a name!) are taking their place as the only newcomers.
A ball is where things shift more for White Sox affiliates. For starters, the levels are officially being rebranded from Advanced A and Class A to High-A and Low-A (which was already our style at FutureSox). Additionally, the teams comprising the leagues are very different.
High-A is still a three-league level, but teams from the Florida State League and Carolina League almost entirely moved to Low-A. Winston-Salem is one of only two Carolina League teams to remain in High-A. Wilmington is the other, but they are in the other division. The Dash are in the 12-team High-A East, in the seven-team South Division. They will face off against five teams that moved up from the South Atlantic League, which will be familiar to White Sox fans, and Bowling Green, which moved up from the Midwest League. The other division features Wilmington alongside four teams that moved up from the Short-Season A New York-Penn League.
Finally, Kannapolis is in the Central Division of the Low-A East. The Cannon Ballers are in a similar position as the Dash with most of the teams moving around them while they remained in place. Kannapolis is in a four-team division with the Carolina Mudcats, the Down East Wood Ducks and the Fayetteville Woodpeckers, which all moved down from the Carolina League.
That’s a lot to digest, but for the most part all it means for White Sox affiliates is they will be playing different teams, especially in A ball. The realignment is about reducing travel and costs. Minor league players will also receive a 38-72% pay increase in 2021.
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One of MLB’s reasons for implementing their new minor league setup was for the affiliates to be closer to their parent clubs. The Cubs and White Sox each retained their 4 top affiliates from the recent past. None of those teams will be any closer to Chicago than they had been.
The one significant difference was the Cubs affiliate in South Bend is now a high-A club while their team in Myrtle Beach becomes a low-A one. That is a reverse from past years. South Bend also used to be in the low-A Midwest League. Many of those teams still exist as high-A clubs with one local exception, the Kane County Cougars. They are no longer involved as an MLB PDL affiliate. It was announced earlier this month that Kane County will be among 12 new teams in the American Association, an independent league.
As for the White Sox, their affiliates remain identical and with the same class ranking. The ChiSox have long preferred that all four of their top minor league affiliates be in the same general geographic area and that has stayed the same with each in the southeast part of the country. All but AA Birmingham (Alabama) reside in the state of North Carolina: AAA Charlotte, A+ Winston-Salem and A- Kannapolis.
It’s always bugged me that there are 2 A leagues. Why not quad-A, triple-A, Double-A and Single-A. or A,B,C and D levels. There are 26 letters in the alphabet and they had to use the same one twice? Also, where do the newly drafted begin? Is there a rookie league they’re not talking about? Do they shove everybody in Low-A? High Schoolers as well as College players? Maybe that’s where the independent leagues come in but that doesn’t make sense as the team would want to tightly control their development in that all-important first year.
We’re trying to figure out what the plan will be for new draft picks as well. The advanced, high-draft pick college players probably are unaffected. Most of those guys have made a pit stop in Arizona before finishing their draft year in Kannapolis or Winston-Salem. In the short-term a lot of younger players will be forced into sink or swim moments at Kannapolis though.
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