In one sense, many of the players scheduled to compete in tonight's Southern League All-Star Game at Zebulon's Five County Stadium are hundreds of miles from the nearest big-league baseball stadium.

Then again, they could be as close to the show as they are to a text message from their agents. The line between Double-A in the minor leagues and a debut in the majors is just that fine, says Carolina Mudcats owner Steve Bryant, whose club will host the all-star event.

"So much of it is about the basic economics of professional baseball," says Bryant, a 58-year-old Smithfield native and owner of the Mudcats for almost two decades.

It's more financially feasible in many cases, Bryant says, for the big league teams to promote a player from Double-A to the majors than it is to keep paying for someone to bounce back and forth between the majors and Triple-A.

"It's the least expensive way for the teams in the majors to replace a $2 million or $3 million player with a player who comes with an entry-level salary," said Bryant, whose team is in the Florida Marlins' farm system. "And in a lot of those cases, you're talking about a top-line prospect who's getting moved up."

Mudcats fans probably grasp that concept as thoroughly as anyone. Over the years, few minor league teams have lost, with little warning, more standout players to the parent organization. From Jason Kendall to Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera and, most recently, Chris Volstad, promising players have been here today, gone to the majors tomorrow and never to return.

At the Triple-A level, it's often not so sudden. Prospects at the highest tier of the minor leagues regularly move back and forth. Almost anything -- injuries, performance level, even positional surpluses -- can create a revolving door.

Bryant's point on Double-A is that it's the primary incubator for top prospects while Triple-A can be used as a major league auxiliary roster.

"The perfect developmental model is for the best prospects to skip Class A and Class AAA," Bryant said. "It doesn't always work out that way, of course, and different organizations have different philosophies. But if you invest a lot of money up front in a player, it's only natural that you'd like to get a quick return for that investment on the field. A lot of the players that are able to do that are those who can go from a rookie league to Double-A and from there straight to the majors."

And in that progression, Bryant says there's still a budgetary motive that most of the big league teams are forced to observe. It comes down to the inverted pyramid equation.

"In the big leagues, a fairly small handful of players make the majority of the money," he said. "Again, there are exceptions. But on a lot of big rosters, you'll find situations where five, six or seven players are receiving 40, 50, 60 percent -- maybe even more -- of the total team payroll. The only way to really make that situation work out in the accounting department is to have a lot of players on the roster that don't make a lot of money by star-player standards."

Therein lies what Bryant calls "the beauty" of Double-A for the most promising prospects.

"You can move those guys to the majors fast and get them in at more affordable salaries than if they spent two or three seasons at the next level. That allows the team to concentrate the bulk of its payroll on big-name players," Bryant said. "Then, after two or three seasons, the team has to make the decision about whether to pay those younger players the big money or trade them away for even younger talent that needs to go through the same developmental process. It's just the way the baseball business operates."

Bryant isn't complaining. He and the Marlins are likely to soon extend their working agreement to keep the team's Double-A franchise for two more seasons.

"A big part of what we're trying to sell to fans is the chance to see these future stars at affordable prices," he said. "Most of the players at this level are still on their way up, and a lot of them are on their way to way, way up."

(SOUTHERN LEAGUE ALL-STAR GAME - 7 P.M. TODAY - FIVE COUNTY STADIUM, ZEBULON)

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.