Inside the Fireflies Hottest Start Since 2017 By John Kocsis Jr.
The Fireflies came into Sunday, tied for first place in the South Division of the Carolina League with a 9-5 record as they head home for a six-game set with their in-state rival The Augusta GreenJackets. The club has bolted out to their best three week start in a long time, in fact, you have to journey back to 2017 to find a time Columbia started out of the gates more quickly than this year—and that was still under the old format where a team would play three or four games against an opponent and travel without off days. Today’s Minor League Baseball involves six-game series that are much more difficult to navigate sweeps of and pile up victories in. After their game with Charleston was postponed due to inclement weather and Fayetteville dropped their finale with the Fredericksburg Nationals, that meant Columbia owned the top spot in the South Division with a six-game homestand against the 7-8 Augusta GreenJackets forthcoming. The Fireflies have made a run for a playoff spot in each of their last two seasons. A run in the first half of the 2023 campaign and a good chance in the second half of the 2022 season, but the team is still searching for the Capital City’s first playoff berth in two decades. In the last year of the Capital City Bombers’ tenure in Columbia—prior to the team moving to Greenville, they went 89-47 and lost in the South Atlantic League finals Jack Lind pioneered the club as they triumphed over the Charleston RiverDogs in the first round of the playoffs before the Hickory Crawdads swept the team in their final series in Columbia. That roster included six future Major Leaguers including Carlos Muniz and Lastings Millege and we’ll focus on that 2004 team—and maybe the League winning 1998 team another time. First, let’s take a look at the 2017 Columbia Fireflies and where they are now and compare that roster make-up with the current Fireflies team. In 2017, there are already seven former Fireflies who made the Majors, a few who have had significant impacts for their big league clubs. Andres Gimenez, Ryan Ryder, Blake Taylor, Thomas Szapucki, Merandy Gonzalez, Colin Holderman and Ali Sanchez are the rostered members of 2017 who have gone on to play in the bigs. Let’s start with Merandy Gonzalez, who may not have had a long MLB career—he played in just eight games, but he is significant to the Fireflies franchise. When Gonzalez got the call to the show April 19, 2018, he became the first Fireflies player to make his Major League debut. Now, Blake Taylor is still floating around playing in the minors for the Texas Rangers, so he could still have more MLB time in the tank, but he has probably played the biggest game of any Fireflies player. Taylor was drafted in the second round of the 2013 draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates before getting traded to the Mets. Then in 2019, he was traded again, this time to the Houston Astros for Jake Marisnick. Then in 2021 he was able to pitch in Game 6 of the World Series against the Atlanta Braves. He was the first former Fireflies player to make it to the biggest series of any season.
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