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Daytona Beach, Fla. You can see Jackie Robinson Ballpark, the home of the Reds’ new Advanced A affiliate, sitting on City Island on the left side of the picture in the middle of the frame.
Following the expiration of the four-year player development contract between the Cincinnati Reds and Bakersfield Blaze at the end of the 2014 season, the Daytona Cubs announced Thursday they would now be the Advanced A affiliate of the Reds.
We are proud & extremely excited to announce that Daytona will be the Advanced-A affiliate of @Reds for at least the next four years! #Reds
— Daytona Cubs (@daytonacubs) September 18, 2014
And more from the release:
“One of our initiatives during the re-affiliation process was to work our way back east,” [Reds Director of Player Development Jeff] Graupe said. “We took the time to gather as much information on our potential partners as possible, and quickly identified Daytona as our top priority. We were impressed by Andy Rayburn, Josh Lawther and their staff, and couldn’t be happier to affiliate with such a first-class organization.”
Daytona joins AAA-Louisville, AA-Pensacola, A-Dayton, and A-Billings as Reds Minor League affiliates. Radiology Associates Field at Jackie Robinson Ballpark, formerly Daytona City Island Ballpark, has housed baseball since 1914, and Daytona General Manager Josh Lawther is excited to both continue and further the tradition of Minor League Baseball in Daytona Beach.
“We’re ecstatic to have the Reds now call Daytona home,” Lawther said. “They continually spoke very highly of our community, ballpark and fans, and we look forward to a highly successful relationship both on and off the field.”
With the move to Daytona, all of the Reds’ affiliates are back east of the Mississippi River again, save the Billings Mustangs (Rookie) who have been with the Reds since way back in 1974. (In fact, the Reds’ and Mustangs’ affiliation is the fifth-longest active relationship between any MiLB club and its parent club.) The move makes sense just for the travel benefits. It’s over 2,000 miles from Bakersfield to Pensacola where the Reds’ Double-A affiliate, the Blue Wahoos, play at Bayfront Stadium. It is just a mere 447 miles from Daytona to Pensacola.
As mentioned in the release, the [soon-to-be-renamed] Cubs play their home games at Jackie Robinson Ballpark, which lies on beautiful City Island in the Halifax River. The stadium has the namesake of Jackie Robinson as it held the first racially integrated game in baseball history. You can read more about the ballpark on the Cubs’ website here.
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Jackie Robinson Ballpark
The Reds and Blaze began their partnership in 2011 after Cincinnati was briefly affiliated with the Lynchburg Hillcats in 2010. Previously, from 2005 through 2009, Cincinnati’s Advanced A team was the Sarasota Reds. The Sarasota franchise has since been purchased by the Pittsburgh Pirates and moved to Bradenton where they became the Marauders. Both Bradenton and Daytona compete in the 12-team Florida State League.
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Sam Lynn Ballpark in Bakersfield, Calif. (via Ben’s Biz Blog)
Reds minor leaguers will be leaving behind Sam Lynn Ballpark in Bakersfield which, for all intents and purposes, is a good thing. The yard opened in 1941 and has received only very minor (pun) upgrades since. The facilities are not quite up to MiLB standards and there have been talks about moving the team. The field itself is quite unique. The center-field wall stands only 354 feet away (the shortest in all of MiLB) and the diamond and is the only one in MiLB facing due west, meaning that the sun sets in the batters’ line of vision to the pitcher. The ballpark has a massive batters eye to minimize the effect on the hitters, but even still Bakersfield games often start at 7:30 or 8 p.m. local time. The Blaze deem themselves “the last game of the night” because of the late starts. Another quirk lies in the location of the dugouts… nearly halfway down each foul line. Because of this, the on-deck circles are a bit of a walk from the dugout and you can usually see two or three on-deck hitters.
The move from Bakersfield to Daytona doesn’t mean a whole lot for the Louisville Bats. In the four years that Cincinnati’s Advanced A affiliate was in Bakersfield, exactly two players were transferred directly from there to here, those being catcher Yovan Gonzalez in 2013 and RHP Mikey O’Brien in 2014. With the move, though, it will make it easier for the Reds to adjust their minor league rosters when one team needs more pitching to help for a doubleheader or a taxed bullpen.
Like the Bats, Daytona’s club will open their 2015 season at home on April 9.