Zebulon, North Carolina, has caught the ball that recently was pitched to Wilmington.

Atlanta Braves officials announced this week that the organization will move its Advanced-A affiliate from the Lynchburg, Virginia Hillcats to the Zebulon-based Carolina Mudcats. That agreement, which allows the team to move closer to Atlanta while remaining in the Carolina League, comes almost two years after Wilmington voters rejected a plan to build a stadium that would have brought the team to town.

"We are delighted to reach this agreement with the Carolina Mudcats," John Schuerholz, Braves president, said in the release. "This move will allow us to continue our long-standing affiliation with the Carolina League."

The Mudcats play at Five County Stadium, about 25 miles east of Raleigh. And the fact that the Mudcats already have a stadium may have made the deal sweeter than the one Braves officials pitched to Wilmington in 2012. A Wilmington Braves franchise would have required the city to spend about $37 million to build a new stadium.

When opponents gathered enough signatures to place a stadium bond referendum on the ballot in November 2012, about 70 percent of voters gave it a thumbs-down.

After the defeat, Richard W. Neumann, president of Mandalay Baseball Properties, a partner in the proposed deal, said that voters' rejection of the stadium deal could mean that minor league baseball would be a long time coming to Wilmington.

The situation in Zebulon presented a much simpler solution.

Besides keeping the team in the same league and moving to a location that already has a minor league stadium, the newly announced Braves agreement is cleaner logistically: when the Mudcats, currently a Cleveland Indians affiliate, become part of the Braves’ network, the Hillcats will affiliate with the Indians, the release stated.

“It’s essentially a swap,” Mudcats’ spokesman Darren Headrick said Wednesday of the agreement, which was finalized late last week.

Headrick said that the Mudcats was a fit for the Braves organization.

“North Carolina has been a Braves stronghold for so many years,” he said. “We’re excited to connect with that fan base, and we’re hoping to see excitement from the fans.”

The state has been without a Braves minor league franchise since 1998, when the Durham Bulls became a AAA affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, Headrick said.

Thursday afternoon, the Braves will hold a news conference in Zebulon to discuss details of the deal. Former team manager Bobby Cox, along with current manager Fredi Gonzales, will be among the officials in attendance, Headrick said, adding that he expects the team’s new identity to pull in additional fans.

“We don’t just draw from the Raleigh area,” he said. “We have fans from as far away as Rocky Mount, Clayton and Goldsboro. Over the last couple of years, people have come from as far east as Kinston.”

The Mudcats’ 2015 season opens April 9.