South Carolina adding its 6th minor league baseball team

Chapel Fowler
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Minor league baseball is back in Spartanburg.

The Down East Wood Ducks of Kinston, North Carolina are relocating to Sparkle City, the Texas Rangers announced Tuesday in a news release with Spartanburg city leaders.

The Wood Ducks have been playing as a low-tier minor league affiliate of the Rangers in eastern North Carolina since 2017.

The Spartanburg franchise could start playing as early as 2025, according to the release, and will play in a new baseball stadium set to be built in downtown.

Spartanburg Mayor Jerome Rice said in a release he looked forward to working with various public and private sector partners to “bring this transformative vision to fruition.”

The release didn’t include any details on a potential name change for a team that’ll give Spartanburg its first minor league baseball action in three decades.

Spartanburg was previously home to the Spartanburg Phillies, a minor league affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies, from 1963-1980 and 1986-1994. The city has hosted the Spartanburgers, a collegiate wood-bat team that plays during the summer, at Duncan Park in 2021.

The proposed stadium, which will be developed by The Johnson Group, will feature 3,500 seats and slot into a 16-acre “mixed-used site” in downtown Spartanburg that’ll include housing, office space and entertainment as part of a $250 million development project.

“It will be terrific to bring affiliated professional baseball back to Spartanburg,” Rice said. “Additional affordable family entertainment coupled with needed white collar office space and other world class amenities will ensure downtown Spartanburg is an increasingly impactful economic engine for this region. That benefits all residents of our city and county.”

The Spartanburg franchise will become the sixth minor league baseball team in the state of South Carolina when it starts playing.

The Augusta Greenjackets (who play in North Augusta, South Carolina), the Charleston Riverdogs, the Columbia Fireflies, the Greenville Drive and the Myrtle Beach Pelicans are also affiliated with MLB teams through MiLB for the 2023 season.

The Rangers announced the team’s move from Kinston to Spartanburg about an hour after announcing it had sold the Down East Wood Ducks and the Hickory Crawdads, another minor league team in North Carolina, to Diamond Baseball Holdings, an organization that “owns and operates select Minor League clubs affiliated with Major League Baseball,” per a release.

Both teams will remain affiliates of the Rangers and maintain their current front office staffs, according to the release. The transaction has also been reviewed and approved by MLB Professional Development Leagues and is expected to “close promptly,” the release said.

The Wood Ducks currently play in the Low-A classification, the lowest of four classifications under a recent MiLB restructuring. Four of South Carolina’s five existing minor league teams also play at that Low-A level, while the Greenville Drive play in the High-A classification.

South Carolina has no Double-A or Triple-A minor league teams, which are the top two levels of every MLB team’s farm system and home to the top prospects. The closest Triple-A teams are in Georgia (Gwinnett Stripers) and North Carolina (Charlotte Knights and Durham Bulls).

“The Texas Rangers look forward to working with DBH and The Johnson Group as they move forward on the stadium project in Spartanburg,” Neil Leibman, the Texas Rangers’ chief operating officer and president of business operations, said in the release. “We are excited about having our minor league affiliate in a tremendous new facility in the next couple of years.”

2023 minor league baseball teams in South Carolina

** Name change TBD. Won’t start playing until at least 2025

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