People seem to forget that Norwich had a AA team, but they had poor attendance and were losing money and moved to Richmond in 2009. At the time, the team owners and Minor League baseball concluded that Norwich was too small to support a minor league team with a 71 game schedule. That said, the stadium is nice, although they built it in a cornfield and not in downtown Norwich. The stadium probably never should have been built.
Major League Baseball has clearly mishandled the possibility of contraction, but the current structure of minor league baseball makes no sense. And, for all of the minor league teams investing in their teams, there are others that are not.
Let's look at the current teams:
There are 30 Major League teams.
Minor Leagues:
AAA: 30 teams
AA: 30 teams
Advanced A: 30 teams
A: 30 teams
The above structure makes sense as each MLB team has an A, Advanced A, AA, and AAA team.
Then, you have A Short Season teams, which number 22. 8 Teams have decided that they don't need or want a Class A Short season team. The Norwich Spinners play in this class.
Next comes the Rookie Advanced League which has 18 teams. Thus, 12 MLB teams have decided that they don't need or want a Rookie Advanced League team.
Now, comes the rest of the Minor Leagues, which consists of the Rookie Leagues. MLB teams have 2 to 5 Rookie League teams with most teams having 3 or 4. Most Rookie League teams are owned by MLB, although the advanced Rookie League teams are not.
Unfortunately for Norwich, they have proven they can't support a AA team and Short Season A teams may not be around in the future.