Brooklyn Season Recap: A Young Core Takes Form

Fresh off a 2025 championship, the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets’ High-A affiliate, entered their 25th season with high expectations.

Alas, frequent injuries to key players and uneven first-half production proved to be the club’s undoing. Despite gaining reinforcements from the Mets’ deadline sell-off, the club ended 2026 with a 57-74 record, plunging to 27 games out of first place in the SALLY.

The change in personnel extended to the skipper’s seat. After racking up 137 wins during two years at the helm, Gilbert Gomez received a well-deserved promotion to fill the major league club’s first base coach vacancy.

Brooklyn named Eduardo Nunez – no, not that 2020 Met – as Gomez’s replacement early in the year. Nunez made it clear from the beginning that while winning is always important, it comes secondary to development.

“Of course, you want to win, but at the end, this is a process of developing,” he said.

His Opening Day roster contained 25 players in various stages of their professional development. Mitch Voit and Antonio Jimenez represented the cream of the crop of the Mets’ 2025 draft class. Meanwhile, Cyclones stalwarts Noah Hall and Colin Houck, the latter a former Mets’ first-round draft pick, anchored the team’s veteran core.

Yet, despite the high draft picks augmenting the club’s lineup, the starting nine fell flat in the first half.

Voit remained a bright spot in Brooklyn’s otherwise tepid lineup. It took two months for him to find his stride, but as the summer heated up, his bat followed. In June, Voit posted a .906 OPS, a particularly impressive figure given the pitcher-friendly reputation of the Cyclones’ home ballpark of Maimonides Park.

On the mound, the aforementioned Hall eclipsed Jaison Vilera as Brooklyn’s all-time starts and strikeouts leader, surely becoming an answer to a trivia question in a Brooklyn bar in the process. For the third consecutive season, the season’s opening frame belonged to the former Gamecock. With a sparkling June, he earned SALLY Pitcher of the Month honors and, as an award, was quickly given the bump to AA.

Hall joined 1B Corey Collins, OF John Bay, and RP Garrett Stratton as Cyclones to take their talents north to Double-A Binghamton.

As the quartet exited the Brooklyn clubhouse for fresher pastures on the other side of the Mario Cuomo Bridge, a slew of prospects new to the organization took their place on the roster, including four top-30 prospects.

SS Sammy Stafura, after a breakout first half in the Pirates’ system, headlined the club’s package of prospects.

Stafura’s acquisition received the most publicity out of all of the Mets’ deadline deals, and for good reason: it’s no secret why he was so excited to join the Mets.

Stafura popped 14 home runs in an 18-game span in the two weeks prior to the deal, and while it would be foolhardy to expect that level of production in the future, his midseason swing change primes him for sustained power numbers in 2027. In 21 games with Brooklyn, Stafura procured a .244/.357/.415 triple-slash.

In addition to Stafura, the club acquired center fielder and fellow hobbyist, Aidan Smith, as part of their deadline haul. Smith may not have made as drastic swing adjustments as Stafura, but still posted a .938 OPS in Brooklyn, 300 points higher than his OPS with the Rays.

In 2025, Smith was in the discussion for national top-100 prospect lists, but his offensive production ultimately kept him out of the rankings. Now, if he can replicate his .930 OPS in 2027, those conversations may begin anew.

Stafura and Smith were far from the only impactful position player additions. John Spikerman (Brooks Raley deal) provided a litany of up-the-middle defensive highlights to the Coney Island faithful. 3B Cole Mathis (David Peterson deal) fought through an injury-marred campaign. He will continue his season as part of the Mets’ AFL contingent.

As the club inched closer to the SALLY playoffs in August, the organization called up Aiden Robbins and Elian Pena from Single-A to reinforce the club’s lineup. Both players are relative newcomers to the organization.

Robbins was drafted with the 91st pick of the 2026 draft; “Baseball Jesus” posted a .273/.371/.455 with four dingers in Single-A, earning an expected promotion to Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, Pena, the Mets’ highest-ranked player from their 2025 IFA class, earned the nod after recovering from a frigid start to his professional career, where, in 2025, he started out 0-for-34 in rookie ball. Despite the unfortunate streak, the 18-year-old eventually found his footing. At the time of his promotion to Brooklyn, Pena’s season slash line sat at a league-average .271/.388/.397 with a .354 wOBA/.297 xwOBA.

He faltered down the stretch with Brooklyn, but Pena is expected to highlight the club’s 2027 Opening Day roster.

On the pitching side, the club ended the season with arguably the best starting-5 in the system.

Daviel Hurtado, Emilio Obispo, and Nicolas Carreno all quietly enjoyed excellent campaigns. The southpaw Hurtado ended the year with the second-best ERA in the SALLY. He posted the best start of the season for Brooklyn on August 15, shutting out the division rival Jersey Shore Blueclaws over seven magnificent frames.

The club brought in Luke Gabrysh in the Raley deal to complement the young guns; the 23-year-old quickly earned a promotion to AA.

Rafi Vazquez and Irving Cota both starred out of the pen, producing two of the most underrated years in the system, powering the club’s backend with a 2.41 ERA and 0.73 ERA, respectively.

Injuries waylaid Exit Velocity God Randy Guzman for the majority of the season, but when he was healthy, riders on the nearby Cyclone rollercoaster had to take cover. The aforementioned 2025 third-rounder Jimenez and backstop Daiverson Gutierrez deployed midseason swing changes and parlayed the adjustments into much improved second-half OPSs. Calvin Ziegler and Wyatt Hudepohl both made triumphant returns to the hill.

To echo Nunez’s earlier point, Single-A success is not dictated by on-the-field record. From a developmental standpoint, the season could be deemed a success. Throughout the season, oodles of Cyclones made intentional changes to fulfill a certain developmental goal.

Teams ending the year with their farmhands’ skills stuck in concrete indicate that the organization has taken a rudderless approach towards player development. That did not epitomize the Brooklyn squad, who brought their best Frankstein impression to the ballpark every day.

Stafura, Jimenez, and Gutierrez made swing changes to produce more pop. Pitchers procured peculiar pitches, seemingly on the daily.

One example: the Mets challenged Gabrysh to throw a ‘triangle of fastballs’, a technique mastered by Yankees’ ace Cam Schlittler.

Lower levels of minor-league baseball, especially High-A, are always used as a platform to mold and form a team’s future core. Record always takes second fiddle.

The proof is in the pudding. Carson Benge, A.J. Ewing, Nolan McLean, and Zac Thornton, homegrown big leaguers on the Mets’ roster, all made stops at Brooklyn during their minor-league journey. None of them were on the roster for Brooklyn’s championship series last year.

And while gripes can rightfully be made about the Mets’ 2026 campaign, few can argue that the steps made in the lower levels of the minors led to the conundrum. Instead, the infusion of youth has primed the Mets for sustained success at the major league level.