A little over a week ago, talking with a friend who now lives in Washington, DC, that same friend dedicated no small portion of our conversation to celebrating his proximity (by virtue of living in the aforementioned American city) to minor-league baseball — in this case, to the Bowie Baysox of the Double-A Eastern League, the Frederick Keys and Potomac Nationals of the High-A Carolina League, the Hagerstown Suns of the Low-A Sally League, and even the Aberdeen IronBirds of the short-season New York-Penn League.
Mentioning that same conversation to FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron a couple days afterward, he (i.e. Cameron) replied by suggesting that his present hometown of Winston-Salem — which features no fewer than eight minor-league teams within a 90-minute drive (depending on traffic, of course) — is perhaps the best place to live in the country were one’s sole ambition in life to attend minor-league baseball games.
Because it’s among my ambitions in life to fact check Cameron’s most dubious-sounding claims — and also because I was curious — I spent too much of the weekend attempting to assess which towns and cities offered access to the greatest number of minor leagues.
As a sort of informal way of measuring this, I assigned to those same towns and cities three points for every ballpark within a 30-minute drive (according to Google Maps), two points for every ballpark within 60 minutes, and a single point for a ballpark within 90 minutes — while awarding points for only one team (the closest) per minor league.*
*Note: the scores aren’t recorded here, but the reader can reproduce them easily enough using MiLB.com and Google Maps.
So, for example, to Winston-Salem I assigned three points for the Winston-Salem Dash of the High-A Carolina League, two points for the Greensboro Grasshoppers of the Low-A Sally League (37 minutes away), one point for the Burlington Royals of the rookie-level Appalachian League (64 minutes), and another point for the Triple-A Durham Bulls (89 minutes!) — but not points for the Kannapolis Intimidators, for example, as, like Greensboro, they belong to the Sally League. Is it possible that the presence of an extra Sally League team in the general vicinity improves the experience of a baseball nerd living in Winston-Salem? Perhaps. But the marginal gains are small, I’d submit — and, more to the point, the prospect of measuring such a thing tested the will of the author.
In terms of criteria that were not considered in the creation of this list, “basically everything else” is the answer to that. So, for example, real estate prices: that’s not a criterion. Or unemployment rate: that’s not a criterion. Or weather. Or restaurants. Or schools.
With that said, here are the top-five metro areas for prospect nerds, as best I can tell. Note that all maps (which one can click for the purposes of embiggening) are from MiLB.com and presented on same scale, to avoid confusion. Drive times are courtesy Google Maps.
5. Southeast Suburbs, Cleveland
What an exercise like this one reveals is both that (a) it’s uncommon to find teams from two different minor leagues within an hour of each other and also that (b) it’s decidedly rare to find clubs from three different minor leagues all within the same general metro area. That’s why, even with just three teams, residents of the southeast Cleveland suburbs have considerably above-average access to minor-league baseball, with the Lake County Captains of the Class A Midwest League and Akron Aeros of the Double-A Eastern League both about a half hour’s away and the Mahoning Valley Scrappers of the short-season New York-Penn League about an hour’s drive.
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