Gulf Coast League Braves

The Gulf Coast League Braves are the rookie-level minor league baseball affiliate of the Atlanta Braves. The team plays at the Walt Disney World Resort at Champion Stadium at Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex.

The team is composed mainly of players who are in their first year of professional baseball either as draftees or non-drafted free agents from the United States, Canada, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and other countries.

In 2003, the Gulf Coast Braves won a best-of-three series to defeat the Gulf Coast Pirates and become the Gulf Coast League champions. They did not make the playoffs in 2006.

In 2015, the Gulf Coast Braves finished second in the Northeast division with a 27–33 record. They were 9.5 games behind the division-winning Tigers, and did not make the playoffs.

The team traces its history to the earliest days of "complex-based" baseball. Initially based in Sarasota, Florida, it was a member of the short-lived Sarasota Rookie League (1964) and Florida Rookie League (1965), and was a charter club in the Gulf Coast League when it formed in 1966. The GCL Braves have operated from 1964 to 1967 and continuously since 1976.

Gulf Coast League

The Gulf Coast League is a minor league baseball league that operates in Florida. It is a rookie league, and together with the Arizona League forms the lowest rung on the minor-league ladder. The league plays a 60-game season that runs from mid-June to late August. Teams in the league are divided into four divisions, East, Northeast, Northwest, and South. The four division winners play in a one-game semifinal; the team with the best regular-season record plays the division winner with the lowest record, while the division winner with the second-best record plays the division winner with the third-best record. Should the Northeast and Northwest Divisions finish 1st and 4th, the semifinal matchups place 1st vs. 3rd and 2nd vs. 4th. The semifinal winners meet in a best-of-3 game series for the Gulf Coast League championship.

GCL teams generally play at the minor league spring training complexes of their parent major league clubs, and are uniformly owned by those parent clubs. The teams generate little if any revenue, as admission is not charged and no concessions are operated. As almost all of the games are played in the heat and humidity of Florida summer afternoons, very few show up to watch the average contest. This does not, however, affect the quality of play or competition, as most of the players are drafted in that year's entry draft, two to three weeks before the season begins. The emphasis is therefore on skill development, rather than winning games or entertaining fans. For this reason GCL games, like their Arizona League counterparts, are among the least competitive in the minor leagues.