Call-ups, demotions, and roster shuffling can happen in the blink of an idea in present-day Major League Baseball. It’s both a beauty and a curse of the sport.
One day, you can be receiving that life-changing call that the dream you’ve spent your whole life working towards is finally happening. Then, you can find yourself demoted right back down to the minor leagues. One day you’re a big leaguer, the next day you’re not.
With how fast-paced roster decisions are today, it’s almost astounding to think that an MLB club could be so far away from their top minor league affiliate. When the Pirates affiliated with the Hawaii Islanders starting in 1983, their Triple-A guys, including top prospects, were playing half their games over 4,600 miles away.
Imagine if this season, Konnor Griffin opened the season in Triple-A Hawaii. When the Pirates called him up on April 2nd after just five games in the minor leagues, he was on the field at PNC Park the next day to make his MLB debut. Had he been forced to travel from Honolulu, the travel time alone would have likely postponed his debut by a day.
Griffin, or any other prospect from that time, would have still been just “a phone call away,” but the logistics for having a top farm club all the way out in the Pacific Ocean made it a much more convoluted endeavor.
But, despite the complicated travel schedule, the existence and acceptance of Honolulu as an affiliate had already been commonplace around the league for over 20 years. In fact, they weren’t even the farthest affiliation by distance the Islanders had taken.
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