With the announcement of the new minor league alignment on Friday, baseball season is starting to feel real. More importantly, some semblance of normality finally seems to be returning.

There’s no denying the negative impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on baseball. While Major League Baseball was played in 2020, it was limited to 60 games and no fans at games. Minor League Baseball was not as fortunate, as their entire season was canceled. Entire teams were disbanded and the amateur draft was drastically reduced.

With Friday’s news, the vision for what minor league baseball will look like in 2021 was given a clearer focus. MLB announced the new alignment, which narrows each team’s affiliation down to four teams.

While these aren’t quite the minor leagues we’re used to, they are minor leagues nevertheless. Baseball, as well as the world in general, is still in a process of rebuilding after the pandemic essentially put everything in shambles. But the fact that it looks like a full minor league season is going to be played this year is huge.

It’s often easy to take minor league baseball for granted, especially for the casual fan who might only pay attention to the major league team. But the minor leagues is of course where all players get their start, and where players are drafted and developed into major league assets. Without the minors, there would be no majors.

The minors are also used as a tool in some sense, with players being promoted and demoted as need be. You often hear about the classic “Quadruple-A player” who finds himself routinely going back and forth between Triple-A and the majors. Without minor league baseball, none of this would be possible. A huge piece of the puzzle was blatantly missing in 2020.

In the short term, it wasn’t the end of the world, and baseball lived on despite all the obstacles and hindrances. But now that we’re approaching a full season, we need MiLB to keep MLB alive and floating for years to come.

The new alignment will still be an adjustment. There aren’t as many minor league teams now, which unfortunately is a huge detriment to players who would have been picked in the later rounds of the draft. Teams will have to figure out slightly altered strategies of developing players and using the remaining affiliates to their advantage. At first, things are probably going to seem a little strange.

But at the end of the day, minor league baseball is back. In some sense, you could say that minor league baseball is “saved.” Because the optimistic reality is that it’s probably only going to get better from here for the minors. The thick of the pandemic was certainly the low point, and Friday’s news was a big step forward in the process of rebuilding the game we all know and love.

The minor leagues offer a huge support system to the major leagues. And I’m honestly not sure that MLB could have gone on another year without it.