Baseball in the United States the Atlanta Braves' affiliates except the Carolina Mudcats. Minor League teams that are owned directly by the major league Club do not have PDCs with each other and are not part of the reaffiliation shuffles that occur every other year. A special minor league is the Arizona Fall League. It operates outside the Minor League Baseball hierarchy and is owned by MLB as a whole; teams generally assign prospects from the AAA and AA classes to the league's six teams. Today, 19 affiliated minor baseball leagues operate with 246 member clubs in large, medium, and small towns, as well as
Baseball Challenge League compete for the league championship. Each team carries 27 players. Typically, players earn 150,000 yen (c. U.S. $2,000) per month, with another 50,000 yen in potential bonuses. The league imposes a 7.2 million yen (c. U.S. $60,600) salary limit for team managers. The BC League began play in 2007 as the Hokushinestu Baseball Challenge League. It originally consisted of four teams based in the Hokuriku region: the Ishikawa Million Stars, the Niigata Albirex Baseball Club, the Shinano Grandserows, and the Toyama Thunderbirds. In 2008 the league added two teams, Gunma Diamond Pegasus and the Fukui Miracle Elephants, and split into