As a Royals affiliate, Wilmington had the best winning percentage (.564) among all full-season minor league clubs, according to the Blue Rocks. Also during that 12-year span, the Blue Rocks made the Carolina League playoffs 10 times and won four titles, with the last coming in 1999.

Minker said Moore, Royals owner David Glass, assistant GM Dean Taylor and farm director J.J. Picollo all visited Wilmington on Monday to talk about returning. "It is great to be wanted," Minker said. "We met for over four hours, exchanging philosophies and making sure we were all on the same page."

Triple-A Picture Clearing

Meanwhile in Triple-A, major and minor league teams were still talking, with no formal agreements announced but several likely on the horizon. With the Phillies leaving Scranton/Wilkes-Barre for Ottawa, where they'll play a year before moving to Allentown, Pa., the available major league teams are the Mets, Nationals, Orioles and Yankees. They're jockeying for spots in Columbus, New Orleans, Norfolk and Scranton.

The Columbus Dispatch was reporting that the board of directors for the Columbus Clippers was meeting on Wednesday afternoon to approve a two-year player-development contract with the Nationals. The most important thing to the Clippers seemed to be a two-year agreement because the team wants to go after the Reds or Indians affiliation in 2008, after losing the 28-year relationship with the Yankees.

That means the Orioles are almost certain to end up in Norfolk, where the Tides ended an affiliation with the Mets that stretched back to 1969. Tides owner Ken Young is also the leader of an ownership group that purchased a group of three Orioles affiliates in Maryland (Bowie, Frederick and Delmarva) from Comcast over the summer.

"I'd say it's an 88 percent chance we end up with the Orioles and about a 12 percent chance we go back with the New York Mets," Tides general manager Dave Rosenfield told The Virginian-Pilot.

That raises the stakes in the race for Scranton even more, with the Mets and Yankees both doggedly pursuing the Red Barons. But Rosenfeld said he thinks the Yankees are the solid front-runner because the team has not even contacted the Tides.

That would leave the Mets in New Orleans, which is considered the least attractive option in this situation even though it probably has the best facilities available. But in spite of the Zephyrs' efforts to boost the area, New Orleans continues to struggle in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the team also is the least attractive geographically among the four available cities.