First Half Record: 25-40 (6/6 South Atlantic League North)
Second Half Record: 32-34 (4/6 South Atlantic League North)
The 2025 season was a magical year for the Brooklyn Cyclones. The team dominated the first half of the South Atlantic League season, earning a playoff berth, and for first time since 2019, a championship trophy was hoisted over Coney Island.
The Brooklyn Cyclones team that Eduardo Núñez had in 2026 was a very different team than the squad Gilbert Gomez had in 2025, and it showed. A
general sense of malaise permeated throughout the entire Mets minor league system, but no team was worse than the Brooklyn Cyclones, who went 25-40 in the first half and were the second-worse team in the South Atlantic League.
The team perked up a bit in the second half, going 4-0 in June, 10-13 in July, and 15-11 in August. At the beginning of September, Brooklyn found themselves six games behind in the standings, playing a seven-game series (a game from July was being resumed) against the first-place Frederick Keys. While an extreme long shot, a sweep of the series would have rocketed the Cyclones up in the standings, potentially into first place depending on how the rest of the South Atlantic League North did that week. Their final series of the 2026 season unfortunately did not go the way the team and its fans were hoping, as Brooklyn kicked things off by dropped both games of the series opening double-header to immediately have their playoff hopes dashed, and then lost it to fall a game below .500 not just in the second half, but on the season. With the series loss, Brooklyn ended both the first and second halves of their season below .500, the first time for them to do that since the South Atlantic League moved to a split-season format in 2022.
TEAM MVP
John Bay: 77 G, 271 AB, .232/.360/.458, 63 H, 16 2B, 3 3B, 13 HR, 35 BB, 88 K, 18/22 SB, .294 BABIP
(Runner Up: Corey Collins)
John Bay, whose father played football at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, was a three-sport all-state player at Shattuck High School in Shattuck, Oklahoma, but when he began his collegiate career at OSU, he quickly found out that he was a big fish in a small pond. Competing for playing time thanks to the havoc that COVID-19 played on the college baseball season and decisions that were later made to attempt to do right by the players who missed the season, Bay ended up redshirting in his freshman season in 2021. He played in the Appalachian League that summer and hit .229/.381/.473 in 51 games, leading the league with 10 home runs. That was enough to get him a little playing time in 2022, and the outfielder appeared in 26 games, accruing 34 at-bats and hitting .324/.415/.500.
That summer, he was recruited by former Cowboys assistant coach Roland Fanning, who left OSU for Austin Peay University after the season ended. Bay played for the Lakeshore Chinooks of the Northwoods League that summer and entered the transfer portal, transferring to Austin Peay. He missed roughly a month at the beginning of the season due to a hamate injury but ended up appearing in 26 games for the Governors, hitting .225/.343/.528 with 8 home runs. In 2024, his redshirt junior season, he had a breakout season, hitting .365/.471/.817 in 55 games with 24 home runs. He followed that up with a strong stint in the Cape Cod Baseball League, hitting .254/.393/.507 with 4 homers in 23 games for the Chatham Anglers, but the 2024 MLB Draft came and went without the 23-year-old Bay’s name being called.
Bay finished up his collegiate career in 2025 hitting .360/.507/.769 in 59 games with 22 more home runs, giving him a cumulative .338/.463/.732 batting line with OSU and Austin Peay with 42 doubles, 6 triples, 55 home runs, 24 stolen bases, 99 walks, and 166 strikeouts in 166 total games. Once again, the draft came and went and Bay did not hear his name. He had numerous independent league offers on the table, but no major league offers were extended until the Mets called; Bay agreed immediately.
The 24-year-old outfielder was assigned to the Low-A St. Lucie Mets and he hit the ground running, hitting .333/.464/.593 in his 17 games there, logging 3 doubles, 1 triple, 3 home runs, 4 stolen bases, and drawing 9 walks to 21 strikeouts. He was promoted to High-A Brooklyn at the end of the season and hit .103/.333/.207 in 10 games for the eventual South Atlantic League champions. A few weeks after the season ended, he was selected to replace the injured D’Andre Smith in the Arizona Fall League and went 1-10 in the 3 games he appeared in drawing two walks and striking out 5 times. He remained in Brooklyn to begin the 2026 season and continued showing his trademark power even in a ballpark that dampens offense, appearing in 77 games and hitting .232/.360/.458 with 16 doubles, 3 triples, 13 home runs, 18 stolen bases, and drawing 35 walks to 88 strikeouts. In late July, he was promoted to Double-A Binghamton and appeared in 39 more games for them, hitting 252/.363/.366 with 6 doubles, 3 home runs, 11 stolen bases, and 20 walks to 48 strikeouts.
The 6’1”, 220-pound Bay stands square at the plate, holding his hands high at the eyes, wrapping his bat behind his head angled at 2:30, almost perpendicular to the ground. He swings with a slight leg kick, and has a quick, long-levered stroke. He has above-average power when he can get extended and pull the ball in the air. He has enough barrel control and makes decent enough swing decisions that he is not a one-dimensional stomp-and-lift hitter and does use the rest of the field. While his swing-and-miss rate is high and his strikeout rate concerningly high, his overall contacts numbers have been about average, and he has shown the ability to draw a high number of walks.
Bay is athletic and is a solid defender. The majority of his playing time in the outfield has come in center, with a bit less time in right field and a bit less time still in left. The 25-year-old does not have an explosive first-step, but is speedy, reaching his running gait quickly. His arm is a bit stronger than what is expected of most centerfielders, but is fringe-average or so for right field.
TEAM CY YOUNG
Daviel Hurtado: 17 G (15 GS), 77.0 IP, 52 H, 30 R, 23 ER (2.69 ERA), 26 BB, 74 K, .242 BABIP
(Runner Up: Bryce Jenkins)
A native of Havana, Cuba, Daviel Hurtado left the island nation and took up residency in the Dominican Republic in 2022. Having played on the U-12 and U-15 Cuban National Baseball Teams, the left-hander drummed up some interest but elected to wait to for the 2023-2024 international signing period to begin instead of signing with a club immediately in order to better showcase his talents and maximize his potential contract. On January 15 2023, when the signing period began, he came to terms with the Mets and was given a $640,000 signing bonus. He was assigned to the Dominican Summer League for the 2023 season, but did not actually pitch, as Tommy John surgery kept him off the mound all season.
After the healing and rehabbing process came to an end, he finally made his professional debut in May 2024 with the FCL Mets. He remained with them for the entire 2024 season and appeared in 8 games, all starts, posting a 6.32 ERA in 15.2 innings, with 15 hits allowed,10 walks, and 23 punch outs. The organization had him remain in the FCL when the 2025 season began but they quickly promoted him to Low-A St. Lucie after he began the year allowing just a single earned run in 19.0 innings, allowing 8 hits, walking 5, and striking out 25. With the St. Lucie Mets, he appeared in 13 games, making 7 starts, and posted a 2.70 ERA in 46.2 innings, allowing 45 hits, walking 19, and striking out 50.
The 21-year-old began the season with St. Lucie but was promoted to High-A Brooklyn after four starts. With the Cyclones, he appeared in 17 games and made 15 starts, posting a 2.69 ERA in 77.0 innings, allowing 52 hits, walking 26, and striking out 74. Altogether combined, the southpaw posted a 2.93 ERA on the season, allowing 62 hits, walking 27, and striking out 89 in 86.0 innings.
The 6’1”, 165-pound southpaw is well proportioned and lean. He throws from a high-three-quarter arm slot with loose, whippy arm that utilizes a long arm action through the back. He throws from the far first base side of the rubber, further amplifying the difficult angle that his pitches attack batters from. The southpaw has a repertoire that includes a four-seam fastball, curveball, slider, and changeup.
His fastball sits in the low-to-mid-90s, sitting in the low-90s and topping out comfortably at 95 MPH. The pitch has about 15 inches of induced vertical break and features above-average run thanks to its spin efficiency and the left-hander’s slingy delivery, so much so that it often gets characterized as a sinker. The pitch doesn’t really miss too many bats, nor do hitters have problems dealing with it and putting it in play with authority.
The southpaw’s curveball sits in the mid-70s-to-low-80s, featuring 55 inches of vertical drop and 5-10 inches of horizontal movement, making it a loopy, slurvy 11-5 bender. His slider sits in the mid-to-high-80s, featuring 35 inches of vertical drop and 3-5 inches of horizontal movement, giving the pitch hop. The two breaking balls tunnel well with each other, the slower curveball featuring more overall movement and the faster slider featuring less.
Infrequently, Hurtado throws a changeup. The left-hander has been more effective against right-handed batters than fellow lefties over the course of his career, but he has been effective enough against left-handed batters and as such has not really needed to develop a pitch to neutralize them.
While none of his pitches individual grade out as much better than average, with his fastball a decidedly below-average pitch, his total ability plays up thanks to his ability to tunnel his pitches and his ability to command everything pinpoint control. Hurtado is at his best when he is nipping the zone for strikes and then expanding it for strikeouts or weak contact with his breaking pitches. The southpaw was able to limit damage to an extreme degree in 2026, posting a 23.4% line drive rate, 54.6% groundball rate, and 22.0% flyball rate, with a 10.4% HR/FB rate. The Cuban left-hander does not have much of a resume, but his damage-prevention abilities might not simply be a product of Maimonides Park, as he a similarly favorable 23.5% line drive rate, 43.6% groundball rate, and 32.9% flyball rate with a 6.1% HR/FB rate in his 65.2 innings in the complex and St. Lucie in 2025.
