Down on the Farm

Despite having only attended a couple minor league baseball games in person (Denver Zephyrs), I know for a fact that minor league baseball is awesome. My perceived greatness of the developmental system is not based on rivalries or quality of play or well known superstars. No, I know that minor league baseball is awesome because of these:

The logos and hats from minor league baseball are amazingly creative and most teams take some random local thing and turn it into an amazing brand. The Hillsboro Hops are a relatively new team, having transferred from Yakima, Washington in 2013. The former Yakima Bears (with its boring name and logo) used the move to make a brand that is unique (no other team has ever been named the Hops), has multiple meanings (regional beer history and baseball lexicon of bad hop, short hop, etc), and has the potential for such cool logos as you see above. It is really unfortunate that the Hops are associated with the Diamondbacks and I must hate them.

This past baseball offseason, there was a flurry of activity as minor league affiliation contracts were expiring and teams were searching for improvements to their minor league setups. As a masochist and Rockies fan (which might be the same thing), I try to keep up with the teams affiliated with the Rockies. The Rockies happened to be one of the teams that made some changes to their minor league system.