Over the weekend, when the Yankees pulled their minor league affiliations from Trenton and Staten Island, there was a lot of scuttlebutt out of both locales that the decision was a blindside.
Apparently, that's also the case across the East River, based on a Tweet from the seemingly-former Low-A affiliate of the Mets, the Columbia Fireflies - who, on the day Steve Cohen held his introductory press conference as owner of the Mets, found out they apparently no longer work for Uncle Stevie,
During his speech after Cohen's introductory presser, Sandy Alderson said that the Mets' four full-season affiliates going forward would be in Syracuse, Binghamton, Brooklyn, and St. Lucie, leaving Kingsport and Columbia out in the cold.
The new alignment means Brooklyn, formerly the Short-Season Class-A affiliate in the New York Penn-League, will be moving to High-A, as St. Lucie (like the rest of the Florida State League) will re-classify from Class-A Advanced to Class-A.
The departure of Kingsport, which was the Mets' affiliate in the Advanced-Rookie level Appalachian League, was already known, as the Appy has been converted to a collegiate summer wood bat league as part of MLB's minor-league contraction plan.
Columbia, on the other hand?
Did.....did we just get dumped via Twitter?! https://t.co/tV7iyVOwA3
— Columbia Fireflies (@ColaFireflies) November 10, 2020
The Fireflies are the second South Atlantic League team affiliated with New York baseball to lose their parent team – the Yankees ended their affiliation with the Charleston RiverDogs amidst all their changes – and the change ends what was a quick era in South Carolina's capital for the Mets, who moved their Low-A team from Savannah and opened the 9,000-seat Segra Park in 2016.
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