Darin Ruf is now back with the Giants, having signed a minor league deal with the team that traded him to the Mets before the trade deadline last season.
After a disastrous and brief tenure in New York, which ended with the Mets letting him go following a brutal spring training, Ruf told The Athletic's Andrew Baggarly that playing in New York brought unique challenges, and in the end, it simply didn't work out.
"Anywhere you struggle, fans are going to be tough on you but in New York it's magnified," Ruf told Baggarly. "I think the media there really runs with what fans' perceptions are. So, you're kind of getting crushed by two entities. Even if you're not on social media a heck of a lot, you still have an idea and you see things."
Ruf certainly didn't do anything on the field to help his perception from Mets fans, posting a lowly .413 OPS in 28 games after coming from San Francisco with a career OPS near .900 against lefties. But the paired platoon with fellow deadline acquisition Daniel Vogelbach was a failure, and now, Ruf is back where he always felt comfortable, and where he was uprooted from after last summer's trade that sent J.D. Davis and prospects to the Mets.
"They are fantastic at what they do," Ruf told Baggarly of the Giants organization. "We had it really, really good and we got kind of thrown into figuring things out for ourselves and that was really tough to do."
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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