The new owners of the Syracuse Mets have asked residents to help rename the team once again. Diamond Baseball Holdings (DBH) bought the baseball team last year from the New York Mets who owned the minor league club since October 2017.
The historic Syracuse team has existed for nearly 150-years playing in the International Leage since 1934, save five of those years due to Major League Baseball reorganization in 2021.
Onondaga Historical Association’s Curator of History Robert Searing says, the team formed long before then in the mid 1880’s.
“It was primarily the Syracuse Stars until the Stars disband in 1929,” Searing explained. In 1934, he went on, “We get the Chiefs, again, when the International League returns to Syracuse.”
They played at MacArthur Stadium until the NBT Bank Stadium was built in 1997, opening seating capacity to 10,815 fans. It was then that the team changed its name to the Sky Chiefs.
"Which I never quite understood from a namesake,” said Searing. “Nonetheless, it was about a 10-year trial with that.”
Twelve years later, the New York Mets’ parent corporation bought the team in 2019 making it the Met’s Triple-A affiliate team. In 2024, Sportico.com reported the MLB offloaded the team to focus on player development but kept the Syracuse Mets in its mix.
Syracuse native Jason Smorol has managed the team through the transitions since 2013. He said Syracuse fans have signaled for years they want a team to call their own.
“A lot of people love this area, [they’re] from this area, and they say we should just have our own identity and not be attached directly to the major league teams,” he said. “So, that’s what’s kind of given us that belief that the time is right now to make a change.”
Smorol affirmed the affiliation with the Mets continues but the “Re-Name the Team Community Challege” is for the public to enter their best ideas through August 31. Management will narrow down those entries to the top ten choices and let the fans vote once again on September 2nd. The team will finally reveal their new name at the close of the 150th season in 2026.
