08-05-2025
The future of the Mets offense is at Coney Island: A night with the Brooklyn Cyclones
BROOKLYN — It's the first perfect Friday of the year at Coney Island, shorts weather, with the wind coming off the Atlantic more a whisper than a yell. Batting practice at Maimonides Park is punctured by screams of delight from those on the Thunderbolt roller coaster beyond the left-field wall, getting an early start to their weekend.
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On the diamond, though, the High-A Brooklyn Cyclones are going through the daily routine of getting better, of applying this small adjustment or that reiterated lesson in the hours before a game against the Wilmington Blue Rocks. As David Stearns watches from behind the batting cage, Brooklyn's hitters take turns before several go off to the side for individual sessions off a tee with Jeff Albert, the organization's director of hitting development.
Baseball is a game of process over results, and for the Mets, few processes are more important in 2025 than the evolution of their minor-league hitting development. It's a paramount story across the sport this year, as organizations race to provide their hitters with the personalized and actionable paths toward the improvement that pitchers have enjoyed (and pressed to their advantage) for the better part of a decade.
For the Mets, nowhere is that task more present than right here, within shouting distance of the ocean. Because here is that next wave of hitting prospects for New York, and on this Friday night, the Brooklyn Cyclones will run out a one-through-nine lineup of prospects who all, according to one publication or another, rank in the top 21 in the system.
'It's as deep a lineup as I've ever seen for one minor-league team in terms of talent and status,' Brooklyn manager Gilbert Gomez said.
'We've got some really good examples here,' said Albert, 'of what we're trying to do throughout the organization.'
You've seen Francisco Alvarez and Mark Vientos graduate to the majors, you're watching Luisangel Acuña contribute, and you know about Jett Williams and Drew Gilbert and Ronny Mauricio waiting their turn. This is the group behind them, the group with the best chance to reap the rewards of the Mets' newfound organizational stability and increased investment in their infrastructure.
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For years, the Mets' lack of continuity in the front office filtered down to every level of the minor leagues. A change at general manager usually meant a change in the farm director, which meant a change in the hitting and pitching coordinators, which meant a change in how everything was taught throughout the minor leagues. But even before David Stearns' arrival in the fall of 2023, those areas were stabilizing for the Mets, with Eric Jagers as the director of pitching and Albert as the director of hitting.
'There are just more people speaking the same language,' Albert said. 'The players are probably not thinking about that, but they're experiencing it. A lot of guys here in Brooklyn have essentially been in the draft the last two years, so they've been at the complex, the Florida State League and now here, so you have a couple years' worth of hearing the same consistent message. That's what we want as an organization.'
Brooklyn's three-run second inning starts with a sharp single to center from cleanup man Jacob Reimer. Reimer, unlike anyone else in the Cyclones' starting lineup, was supposed to start last year in Brooklyn and be up in the Eastern League or even beyond by now. But 2024 and 2025 already feel worlds apart.
'It was the hardest year of my life, by far,' the 21-year-old third baseman said of a 2024 season derailed by an early hamstring injury. 'I was constantly reinjuring it during the rehab. Once I was back, it was really hard to get back to the mindset of being able to play and trusting my body fully without thinking, 'Is my hamstring going to give out?' This offseason of putting in the work and trusting that has let me go on the field and just play baseball.'
The results have been eye-opening. Last week, Reimer became the first Cyclone in two decades to hit three home runs in a game. He's currently riding a 10-game hitting streak during which he's batting better than .350. For the season, he's hitting .333 with an OPS above 1.000. He has 18 extra-base hits in just over 100 at-bats.
This afternoon, Jacob Reimer became the first Cyclone to hit three home runs in a single game in almost 20 years.
🍎🍎🍎
— Brooklyn Cyclones (@BKCyclones) April 30, 2025
In many ways, Reimer is Exhibit A for the Mets' evolved approach to hitting development. A fourth-round pick out of high school in 2022, he was not the kind of can't-miss prospect his teammate Carson Benge is. But he's the type of talent that good organizations develop into a major-league contributor or important trade piece. And few players at this level have embraced New York's hitting lab as enthusiastically as Reimer.
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'I've learned just about everything you can about my swing so far,' he said. 'If you go back and look at side angles of my swing from last year to now, you'd laugh. It didn't look too much like a pro swing.'
What's changed?
'I learned about my posture,' he said. 'I was facing toward left field, too much opened up last year. Something as simple as that, no one's thinking about it. The hitting lab showed that. I closed off a little more, everything cleaned up, I worked on some drills the lab gave me in the offseason, and now I'm rotating faster and am more efficient.'
Reimer is the exception to that dynamic Albert mentioned earlier. This is his fourth year in the organization, so he's better positioned to understand and appreciate the Mets' changes to their minor-league infrastructure.
'Our hitting director, coordinators and coaches are all top-notch now. I trust every one of the hitting guys at any level,' Reimer said. 'It's realizing that they're not trying to mess with you as much as they're there when you need them. They like you to do you. It's not just one core belief. They have a set of beliefs, obviously, but they want you to find your own special way to do that, and I love that. That's baseball.'
After Marco Vargas walks and a wild pitch advances the runners, A.J. Ewing's single to center scores both of them. Whereas Reimer played his first game for the Cyclones 21 months ago, Ewing played his first three days earlier. The Mets promoted the 2023 fourth-round pick after he posted a .400/.500/.600 slash line at St. Lucie for a month.
'I had a talk with some of the higher-ups right when spring training ended, and they told me I was going to repeat St. Lucie,' Ewing said. 'I told them, 'I'm going to make your life hard to keep me there.' So yeah, it feels good.'
For Ewing, a switch flipped last summer toward the end of July. Having been promoted to Single-A St. Lucie in June, he spent the first 40 games hitting below .200. But over the final six weeks of the season, he hit .275 with a .410 on-base percentage.
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'I had a few rough months and I was like, 'You know, screw it. I'm doing my thing, I know I'm a good player,'' Ewing said of the time. 'It was me realizing I'm good at baseball and I should be here and trusting my plan and process.'
Ewing's growth hinged on the two things the Mets emphasize avoiding as a hitter: miss and chase. Swing in the zone, and make contact when you do. The Mets could see the trendlines improving for Ewing before the results last season.
'You've got the right idea and you're on the right track,' Albert said about a conversation with Ewing. 'This is going to come together for you.'
Here's a look at the average exit velocity for Cyclones batters through the first month of the season. #AmazinStartsHere
— Brooklyn Cyclones (@BKCyclones) May 6, 2025
Albert brings up the way Ewing took that approach into his offseason work. If avoiding miss and chase is the key for Mets hitters, the focus for Mets hitting coaches is on two other pillars: Make it actionable and transfer ownership.
When you see something that a hitter can improve, develop and communicate the steps to do so. And do it in a way that makes the hitter care enough about it to embrace it, to make it his own mission.
'Meet them where they are,' Albert said, 'but also help them get where they want to go.'
It ends up being a quiet night for Carson Benge, unexpected given the dozen hits he'd amassed in the previous five games. That ended any conversation about a slow start for last year's first-round pick.
Benge and Eli Serrano, Brooklyn's 6-foot-5 leadoff hitter on this Friday night, were drafted last summer out of big-time colleges and are thus in their first full professional season with the Mets. A two-way player at Oklahoma State, Benge can now focus exclusively on hitting and playing the outfield. Serrano, a fourth-round pick out of North Carolina State, defied the ballpark's early-season bias against left-handed hitters by hitting two homers out to right field in the first homestand.
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'We've gotten some good days with the wind blowing out, I guess,' he said.
While Serrano doesn't look or profile like a leadoff hitter, he's walked nearly as much as he's struck out this season, carrying an on-base percentage near .400 with power that should play better now that the weather's warmer.
His time in the lab during the spring has led to a focus on his base.
'I'm tall and lanky, so it's about understanding how to fully use everything I've got,' he said. 'Understand that my base wasn't working the way it needed to work. Using my hips a little more. Staying in my base through my whole swing.'
Serrano smiled when recalling how overwhelming the lab could feel.
'Honestly, it was a lot of stuff I didn't understand. They've got to dumb it down for all of us,' he said. 'It tells you everything about your swing you need to know. It helped me understand some things about my swing to work on and keep going.'
There it is again: Meet them where they are, help them get where they want to go.
Gomez, Brooklyn's manager, joked that he'd love each player with that pedigree to hit .350 with 20 homers and 100 RBIs. Instead, the goal for that first full season is to create good habits.
'(We want to) make sure they're handling themselves as professionals and creating a routine that will stick for the rest of their career and understanding that failure is a part of this game,' Gomez said. 'I've always said, 'This is the time to fail.' If you don't learn how to deal with failure, you're going to be a madman most of the time.'
How do you do that with 21-year-olds?
'It's a lot of conversations and holding people accountable, making sure they can trust you as a person first and be available for them,' Gomez said. 'It's just creating the relationship first, but also creating the environment that, regardless of who you are or your status, we're always going to be holding you accountable as a family.
'A family says good things, but also the things you don't want to hear. That's what we're here for.'
That three-run second inning was enough for the Cyclones this night. The bullpen closed it out, with Anthony Núñez, who's permitted one hit in 14 innings this season, earning his first save as a pro.
This Friday is just a snapshot. The weather turned colder, the rain came in, Luna Park is still closed most weekdays until Memorial Day, the coasters quiet. But it's the kind of day that makes you dream about more like it, about where the Mets are now as an organization, and where they want to go.
(Photo of Jacob Reimer: Jess Stiles /Sipa USA via Associated Press)
