Ranking MLB Organizations By Shortest Distance Traveled Between Minor League Affiliates

The more the minor leagues change, the more they stay the same. That much is true for the Orioles, Nationals and Indians.

When Baseball America studied the distance between minor league affiliates prior to the 2018 season, Baltimore, Washington and Cleveland had the most ideal array of minor league affiliates.

That is, travel between those organizations’ affiliates was the shortest and least costly.

The same holds true in 2021. The Orioles, Nationals and Indians again place 1-2-3 in our geographical power ranking of the shortest distances between successive minor league affiliates within an organization.

To determine the distances between affiliates, I simply entered the two teams’ ballpark addresses into Google Maps and chose the shortest driving distance yielded by the search.

The Orioles have it made with a string of affiliates tightly clustered in the mid-Atlantic region. Baltimore prospects travel from Low-A Delmarva to High-A Aberdeen to Double-A Bowie, all three in the Orioles’ home state of Maryland. From there they head to Triple-A Norfolk on the Virginia coast, which is 232 miles from Camden Yards.