Pittsburgh’s affiliate history in the early 1980s was a little all over the place.

While the Pirates had their Triple-A affiliate in Portland, Oregon to start the 1980 season, the remainder of their affiliates were a lot closer to the team. The road to Pittsburgh started in either Shelby, North Carolina or Salem, Virginia where the Pirates carried a pair of Single-A teams.

Many of those players would then take a trip up north to Buffalo, who joined the Pirates’ system the same time as Portland in 1979. Buffalo hosted the organization’s Double-A affiliate, meaning the only major distance between the Pirates and an affiliate was the Beavers out in Oregon.

The following year, Shelby and Salem were out. The Pirates moved one state down and established a new Single-A affiliate in Greenwood, South Carolina, while also keeping a presence in Virginia and partnering with the Alexandria Dukes after the club went independent for the 1980 season.

While Portland missed the playoffs and both Buffalo and Alexandria suffered abysmal seasons, Greenwood took the South Atlantic League by storm in their inaugural season. The Pirates won the South Division with a 79-65 record and advanced to the SAL Final against Greensboro before the Hornets (who went 98-43 that year) dispatched them.

That affiliation lineup stayed put for 1982, a year that saw Portland and Buffalo continue to struggle and Greenwood tumble off a cliff, but Alexandria win their division and the Carolina League.

The big move in 1983 was changing from Portland to Hawaii in Triple-A. But, after the Bisons were bought and upgraded to a Triple-A classification, the Pirates were left in need of a new Double-A team. They found their replacement in Massachusetts. Since their founding in 1980, Lynn’s baseball club had served as an affiliate of the Seattle Mariners, but their final season in the city now put them with the Pirates.

Lynn actually had the best record of any Pirates minor league affiliate that year. Under manager Tommy Sandt, the team formerly known as the Sailors went 77-62 and finished second in the eight-team Eastern League before falling to the New Britain Red Sox.

Lynn would relocate following the 1983 season, heading over to Burlington, Vermont for the next year and taking on an affiliation with the Cincinnati Reds. After the move, the Pirates turned their attention to New Hampshire, where after Nashua played their inaugural season in the California Angels system, the team was renamed under the Pirates banner and brought into Pittsburgh’s farm system.

That was far from the only change in the minor league food chain for the Pirates.

The organization set up shop in Georgia, replacing their closed Greenwood affiliate and continuing the tradition of short-lived Single-A affiliations the Pirates have had for most of their history. In the Peach State, they rebranded the Macon Redbirds to the Macon Pirates. Pittsburgh was Macon’s third major league affiliate (and therefore third rebrand) in as many years.

Elsewhere, their other Single-A was on the move. The Dukes relocated from Alexandria to Woodbridge, christening a new ballpark a little west of Alexandria and set to play under the banner of Prince William County in Virginia.

By the time things were all said and done, Hawaii was the only one of two affiliate teams to survive the wave of change in the offseason heading into 1984, and the Triple-A club was the lone full-length team to stay within the organization.

The Islanders were joined by the Watertown Pirates in Short-Season baseball as the only two Pittsburgh affiliates to continue, but the upstate New York team played roughly half a full-length baseball season (and were also quite bad, by the way).

Hawaii would also far and away lead the minor league success of the Pirates organization in 1984.

Nashua limped to a 58-82 record, good for second-last in the Eastern League. Macon was even worse, at 57-85 and last place in the South Atlantic League. Watertown finished four games above .500 at 39-35, but out of the playoffs. And although Prince William had a decent 75-65 record, they also failed to make the postseason.

Even the big league club suffered a 75-87 season, their first losing season in a full-length year in over a decade.

That left the Islanders as the organization’s only hope for success in 1984. How would the Hawaiians respond?