Our final jaunt in the minor leagues takes us to Low-A, where there are two leagues. We’ll start in the South Atlantic League, which has been the name of numerous leagues since 1903. It started up and re-started up four times before 1963, when it was turned into the Double-A Southern League in 1964. Sixteen years later, the current version of the SALLY league became fully realized as a Low-A league, beginning with eight teams. Now, it has expanded to 14 teams that span over two divisions. They are as follows:
Northern League: Delmarva Shorebirds (Baltimore Orioles affiliate), Greensboro Grasshoppers (Miami Marlins), Hagerstown Suns (Washington Nationals), Hickory Crawdads (Texas Rangers), Kannapolis Intimidators (Chicago White Sox), Lakewood BlueClaws (Philadelphia Phillies), West Virginia Power (Pittsburgh Pirates)
Southern League: Ashville Tourists (Colorado Rockies), Augusta GreenJackets (San Francisco Giants), Charleston RiverDogs (New York Yankees), Greenville Drive (Boston Red Sox), Lexington Legends (Houston Astros), Rome Braves (Atlanta Braves), Savannah Sand Gnats (New York Mets)
A lot of great minor league team names here (Power, Tourists, Sand Gnats, Drive, Crawdads, are all SUCH minor league names) with only the team in Rome showing a total lack of originality. The league spans as far south as Savannah, GA and as far north as Lakewood, NJ, making it one of the larger areas covered by a league in the minors. That’s a whole lot of long bus rides, I’ll tell you what.
The league plays average across the board, mainly because of the large ground it covers (other concentrated leagues lead to it leaning one way or the other due to geography). Its 4.74 runs per game ranks fourth highest amongst the long season leagues, and its triple slash isn’t bad at .260/.332/.392, where the .724 OPS ranks tied for sixth. The league ERA is 4.12 and also ranks sixth.
The MVPs since the current SALLY league came to fruition reads as a pretty good list. Players include Kevin Seitzer (1984), Andruw Jones (1995), Russell Branyan (1996), the immortal Eugenio Velez (2006 and he of an 0-for-37 in the majors in 2011) and last year’s MVP, Jurickson Profar of the Rangers organization. Profar raked to the tune of .286/.390/.493 with more walks than strikeouts. He also played fantastically with the glove, turning himself into this year’s #1 infield prospect. He was recently ranked as the #4 prospect in baseball by many different outlets behind the holy triumvate of Harper, Moore and Trout.
While Profar will move on up to Myrtle Beach and join a team that is already stacked with pitching prospects Kenny Powers and Ivan Dochenko (Whoops…wrong Myrtle Beach team), other prospects will take his place at the Low-A level. Those could include Dylan Bundy (Orioles), Gerrit Cole (Pirates), Jose Fernandez (Marlins) and Mason Williams (Yankees).
Next time, a quick look at the pitching-centric Midwest League, which will round out the series!
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