[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

In real life, the Pioneer League and Appalachian League are considered to be a rung up from the Gulf Coast League and Arizona League. See Appalachian League - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That certainly used to be the case. I'm not so sure that's really the case anymore, at least in practice. There isn't a 1:1 ratio of MLB clubs to affiliates at either level (30:18 for Appalachian/Pioneer and 30:29 for Arizona/Gulf Coast). There was also the following MLB rules change from 2008 as recounted in this MLB.com article:

In Thursday's other rule change, Rule 51 concerning limits on Minor League service time eliminated the distinction between the levels Rookie, where the limit had been two years, and Rookie Advanced, where players could be kept for three years. Henceforth, the three-year limit will apply to both.

This would seem to indicate that, functionally at least, the two levels are largely indistinguishable.