Introducing the Blue Jays Minor League Team Tracker

Late one Sunday night back in November I wasn’t doing anything but missing baseball so I started looking at the 2018 schedules of the Blue Jays and their minor league affiliates to see what roadtrips I can go on to maximize the number of games I could catch. The exercise involved opening the various schedules in different browser tabs and going back and forth and making notes. It wasn’t a very efficient use of my time but what else was I going to do—watch football?

The result of that was a post about the opportunities where you can catch a Blue Jays game and a minor league game on the same day but I also texted a friend of mine with an unusual request:

I was looking at possible summer baseball roadtrips and I was thinking: is there a way to load the schedules of the Jays and all the minor league affiliates onto a map and highlight the weekends where they are near each other?

She could’ve told me to buzz off, but unfortunately for her free time for the next few months, she replied with:

I bet there may be

So I am very proud to introduce the Blue Jays Minor League Team Tracker, created by map maven Zara Matheson. Esri Canada has kindly allowed us to use their software at no cost for this purpose.

Click here to access the interactive map.

The tracker is pretty self-explanatory and easy to use, but I would like to highlight several key features:

• You can follow the schedules for the Toronto Blue Jays, Buffalo Bisons, New Hampshire Fisher Cats, the Dunedin Blue Jays, and the Vancouver Canadians. Currently the schedules for Bluefield, GCL, and DSL Blue Jays are not included.
• You can watch the teams move around North America by pressing the play button in the blue box on the bottom of the map. You can also change the speed of the movement on the bottom right of the box.
• You can change the display time interval by sliding the double triangles in the scroll bar back and forth. If you have time for a five-day roadtrip some time this summer, for example, set the intervals to five days and click play to see how you can see the most number of games.
• Clicking on a team marker displays individual game information like who the particular Jays’ affiliate is playing and game start times (in the local time zone).
• Currently the teams’ game information is based on the schedule as released in the offseason. Re-scheduled games due to postponements and game cancellations have not been updated yet.
• Each location marker marks exactly to the geographical location of the game’s ballpark when you zoom in.

Take some time to play around and leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments below.

Many thanks again to Zara for the hours of work she poured into this project and Esri Canada for making this possible! Zara previously contributed to Bluebird Banter with this baseball map, back when Bud Selig was still Commissioner and planning to take over Canada and the United States.