minor-league vs second-rate

minor-league

adj
  • Of relatively minor importance 

  • Of or pertaining to a minor league 

second-rate

adj
  • Of mediocre quality; not first-rate. 

  • Of a Royal Navy ship of the line in the Napoleonic Era: having 80–98 guns across three gun decks, a complement of 700–750, and weighing approximately 2,200 tons burthen. 

noun
  • A second-rate ship of the line. 

How often have the words minor-league and second-rate occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )