Syracuse’s Ryan Clifford Probably Wishes He Stayed in Binghamton
The Syracuse Mets did not make the playoffs in 2026.
They used an absolutely remarkable number of players.
Pitchers?
If you guessed 64, five of whom were position players, you win the prize.
Hitters?
They got screwed, by comparison. “Only” 43 hitters were used.
That makes their W-L record irrelevant to me.
You can look it up if you want to.
I can’t imagine any full season baseball team using more players, frankly.
Who’s on first, what’s on second, I don’t know is on third, or something like that.
A finely lubricated revolving door.
They probably had almost as many players as fans this year lol.
Mark Vientos (briefly) and Cristian Morel were their to best hitters, which shows that AAA is not nearly equal in caliber to the major leagues.
The most notable pleasant surprise was Kevin Parada, who hit .307/.386/.466 in 30 AAA games.
Jorge Polanco? He was 2 for 22 in AAA. Yeah, he didn’t hit there, either.
He eventually did hit - the surgeon’s table, that is.
Ryan Clifford fanned 174 times in 115 games - not good on the resume. He also hit about .120 from June 1 through August 31. Tough to do.
Ronny Mauricio, in contrast, fanned just 63 times in 71 games, and we have all seen him scuffle mightily at the major league level, so draw your own Clifford conclusions.
Me? I see that Clifford has a 55 rated arm, so perhaps he should follow strong-armed Nolan McLean and become a lefty power bullpen pitcher. There, the more strikeouts, the better..
On the actual pitching side, only Wenninger and Tong cleared 100 AAA innings, and not by all that much.
Neither put up the overall numbers we hoped for.
Both oddly ended up with 4.54 AAA ERAs.
Tong in 2025, almost all below AAA: 10-5, 1.43. Dazzling.
Tong in 2026 in AAA: 5-6, 4.54. Fizzling.
Wenninger in 2025, all in AA: 12-6, 2.92. Very solid.
Wenninger in 2026, all in AAA: 5-8, 4.54. Semi-solid, at best.
Memo to minor league pitching hopefuls heading to AAA…
AAA is a BIG step. So is the next step, to Queens.
No greater example of the AAA Wall than Joander Suarez.
- Career AA? 17-8, 235 IP, 3.29 ERA, 1.03 WHIP. Juan Marichal.
- Career AAA? 2-5, 29 IP, 11.30 ERA, 2.05 WHIP. Senga as a 2026 starter.
And these next two pen guys, in 2026?
Dylan Ross and Ryan Lambert had Inflation Reduction Act AAA bloated ERAs of 6.34 and 7.71. I didn’t expect that, did you?
At least Ross the Boss was pitching well over the last month plus.
Some wannabes succeed.
It was good to see the Mets successfully promote several pitchers, such as Thornton, Lavender, Yan, and Duarte. Collectively, those 4 have put up MLB numbers that put high-priced veteran pitchers to shame.
Through Sunday, September 20, those 4 combined for 10-6, 3.04 in 145 innings, with 136 Ks. Label them Season Savers. Better than Paul Skenes in 2026 were those 4. You can look it up.
THAT IS MY AAA REVOLTING RECAP.
Hopefully it gets at least a AAAA rating from you readers.
DRAFT DAY
Football exec Kevin Costner (as he starred in the football flick Draft Day) would be rooting for superior Mets draft positioning on this final weekend of the irregular season.
If the Mets haven’t already secured at least the 6th worst record before today’s final season game, here, per AI, is a generalized framework of the draft outlook for the Mets, based on Sunday’s action:
- Top 6 Picks: The Major League Baseball Draft uses a weighted lottery system to determine the first six picks of the draft, open to all teams that miss the postseason.
- The 7th Spot: Only the top six picks are decided by the lottery ping-pong balls. Once those six slots are drawn, the remaining non-playoff teams are slotted into the draft order strictly based on reverse order of their regular-season winning percentages.
- The Worst-Case Scenario: Because the lottery only covers the top six selections, a team with the seventh-worst record cannot fall backward past the 7th pick. If they miss out on jumping into the top six via the lottery, 7th overall is precisely where they land.
1 comment:
As we head into a must lose game 162, the torrid Carson Benge is falling probably a tad short of the fading power guy Sal Stewart for ROY. Benge got off cold as a Met in March and through most of April, going 12 for 74, then hit a terrific .297 since then.
I think CitiField may have cost him the award. I remember him clocking a ball in the first few weeks of April that died out and was caught at the wall. It may have convinced him to not swing for power, but singles, at home.
Going into Sunday, his road slug % was a robust .478. But his home slug % was 100 points lower, at .379. 16 XBH at home, 29 on the road, same number of at bats.
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