Mets end relationship with Fireflies. Here’s what’s next for Columbia’s baseball team
John Katz is confident there will be minor league baseball in Columbia next year. But the team he’s currently the general manager for, the Columbia Fireflies, won’t be affiliated with the New York Mets in 2021.
New York general manager Sandy Alderson announced Tuesday — at a news conference about Steve Cohen’s purchase of the Mets — that Binghamton, Syracuse, Brooklyn and St. Lucie will be the team’s affiliates going forward. Binghamton, Syracuse and Brooklyn are all in New York and St. Lucie doubles as the location of the Mets’ spring training complex.
This leaves the Fireflies searching for a new Major League Baseball affiliate. Columbia has been the home to the Mets’ Class A club since 2016 after it moved from Savannah, Georgia. In 2018, the Fireflies and Mets extended their Player Development Contract through the 2020 season.
“With Major League Baseball restructuring [the minor leagues], I think lot of the teams won’t emphasize restructuring geography with the affiliates, so it’s not surprising,” Katz said. “With that being said, we are the 2016 ballpark of the year and ballpark of the decade, I don’t think we will be single for long.”
Katz said he has heard rumors of a few team that want to come into the capital city and hopes to have an announcement in the next few weeks. Under the new affiliation, MLB will assign what organization the Fireflies will be paired with.
The Fireflies will be the second team in South Carolina to undergo an affiliate change. The New York Yankees announced over the weekend that Charleston RiverDogs will no longer be an affiliate.
Minor League Baseball is expected to undergo big changes for the upcoming season after the Professional Baseball Agreement expired in 2020.
Each of the 30 MLB teams will now have only four minor-league affiliates, and there will only be 120 minor-league teams instead of 160. Some leagues folded because of that. The Appalachian League, which had 10 teams scattered within the rural mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee, announced it was dissolving after more than 100 years of playing baseball.
“We are 100% confident we will be within the 120 teams,” Katz said. “We will be excited to welcome whoever comes in.”
Katz expects the Fireflies to stay in Class A. They will likely still be in the South Atlantic League, although the teams in the league might be different.
In June, MiLB officially canceled the season for its teams during the COVID-19 pandemic. That meant the Columbia Fireflies, Myrtle Beach Pelicans, Greenville Drive, Charleston RiverDogs, Augusta GreenJackets and more than 150 other teams nationally wouldn’t play baseball .
Major League Baseball eventually came back and played without fans in stands until the postseason. That was never an option for minor league teams, which need spectators in the stadium in order to thrive. Last year, the Fireflies drew 245,522 fans and the Pelicans had 226,247. The Fireflies have ranked in the Top 25 in minor league merchandise sales every year since the team moved to Columbia from Savannah in 2016.
Katz is hopeful they can have fans in the stands when the 2021 season begins. And the team is preparing with safety measures already in place just case they can’t be at full capacity. The club has hosted various events at Segra Park since the minor leagues shut down.
“The Columbia Fireflies will have a new Major League affiliate from 2021 forward,” the team said in a Tuesday afternoon statement. “The Fireflies would like to thank the New York Mets for more than a dozen years of affiliation between Savannah and Columbia.”
This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 3:31 PM.
