Best Triple A affiliate team name?

Many of these are legendary teams

jumbo shrimp easily the worst (because the new orleans baby cakes no longer exist)

but yeah most of these are good. although i don't understand why columbus, ohio -- a town not known for being near water (i'd never even heard of the scioto river) -- has a team named after clipper ships

mud hens narrowly over isotopes imo

I don’t know, I love tradition, and so many of these names are 90s or more recent and smell of marketing and merchandising opportunities. Mud Hens it is, for being both a “fun” name and one of long standing.

xp

A tribute to its city's namesake in Christopher Columbus, the Columbus "Veleros" serve as a direct translation from its full-time Clippers moniker. The ship identity commemorates Columbus's voyage across the Atlantic.

The Albuquerque Isotopes are afaik the only team named from a Simpsons episode

hmm. columbus’ ships were caravels, tho — clippers were still 300 years off

i wouldn’t accept ‘isotopes’ from just any town, but albuquerque *is* relatively close to los alamos

The "Isotopes" name was deemed appropriate, since New Mexico has a number of well-known scientific and military facilities dealing with nuclear technology, such as Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), as well as the site of the Trinity test. In addition, uranium mining was a significant industry in the state during the Cold War.

harrisburg isotopes might have been even more fitting, if in much poorer taste (its double-a team is the senators)

gotta be the Oklahoma City Baseball Club

Are we sure half of these aren’t Grateful Dead song titles?

also, fuck Boston for moving out of Pawtucket.

Norfolk Tides. Stirs tbe pretiest image. Retired sailors, pulling in their crab pots from the shelly bay.

Got to give some love to Louisville Bats.

Double meaning and all

whoa

Some people call me Maurice...

will use this thread to get on my high horse about how it seems one graphic design firm was tasked with creating designs for all the minor league teams. i wish there was more variation. they all look the same and i think it's a terrible wasted opportunity to get some really unique designs out there! especially given how cool some of the names are

https://www.mlbstatic.com/team-logos/share/4904.jpg?1728470199182

https://dtjax.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/uXJTY9jI6R45-YbFDx_UyClggH0hsbnENJDumNNJ9kY.jpeg

https://www.mlbstatic.com/team-logos/share/1410.jpg?1728453763927

https://swampshop.milbstore.com/cdn/shop/products/23_Mudhens_Flag_485463-1_2889x.jpg?v=1680810979

This is the IronPigs. Lehigh Valley represent.

Ya, that is definitely a style. A lot of NHL teams have a similar flavour. I’m not sure if there an actual word for it. The problem is (I teach vector graphics and literally use baseball examples all the time btw) the minor league teams don’t have a big legacy like the Phillies or brewers or blue jays that allow a more flat, simple graphic style to be successful because established teams can trade in on their nostalgia and history. So while a major league team is going to want something that looks professional, they are also boxed by needing to have a “fresh” or “new” feel. So everything gets funnelled into that kind of style. If you were a AAA team called the brewers and a designer came up with the glove logo for your team, you would shoot it down. As brilliant a logo as it is, it is also not modern looking at all.
I’m sure eventually an affiliate team will buck the trend in a way that catches on and this “expansion team” style will fall out of favour.

Deadspin called that the "minor league snarl": https://deadspin.com/new-orleans-baby-cakes-mascot-fulfills-commitment-to-th-1789024464/

Having one shop design 50 of them certainly contributes to the mono style of it all

The only triple A mascot I know is the Woosox’s Smiley Ball who looks entirely different

https://cdn0.betterworld.org/user/images/item/20121-5f6cb772a1804-3fa628ae44b721b1f11a-1240.jpg


Although he looks very jolly, he has quite a developed lore about him being a January 6th incursionist and election denier.

Smiley waiting outside your local polling place pic.twitter.com/JlLGL6sNgX

— Pod On Lansdowne (@PodOnLansdowne) November 8, 2022

insult to injury, the design firm that makes 80% of minor league shit is called 'brandiose'

iirc the far-and-away second-place designer is todd radom, whose stuff is much classier: https://www.toddradom.com/work

i miss the portland sea dogs

They still exist! They’re the double A team!

https://www.mlb.com/news/meet-the-oklahoma-city-comets

no longer the oklahoma city baseball club - now the oklahoma city comets! with minor league snarl!

https://img.mlbstatic.com/mlb-images/image/upload/t_16x9/t_w1536/mlb/tq7aza4l5plharqvcmlb.jpg

Voted isotopes, call me back for the AA poll featuring my ROCKET CITY TRASH PANDAS

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