The Rockaway Wave
Originally published August 18, 2023
Ryan Clifford and some of his teammates were sitting in the visiting manager’s office in Greensboro, North Carolina, watching the TV, checking Twitter and waiting for any news on a potential trade.
Then the news broke — The New York Mets traded Justin Verlander to the Houston Astros. Heading back to Queens, Double-A outfielder Drew Gilbert … and Clifford.
“It was kind of quiet,” Clifford said. “Only one guy in the room has been traded before, so no one really knew what to think I guess. It was just kind of quiet, and eventually it kind of settled in.”
Clifford, a North Carolina native, played his high school ball for the North Carolina-based PRO5 Academy. After joining the Astros, he played in Low-A for the North Carolina-based Fayetteville Woodpeckers and High-A for the North Carolina-based Asheville Tourists. On August 1, he was about to begin a series vs. the North Carolina-based Greensboro Grasshoppers.
Instead, he headed back to Asheville, packed up his stuff, and left the next day to meet the Cyclones in New Jersey.
“Just kind of a surprise,” Clifford said. “Kind of at a loss for words, didn’t really know what to think. Definitely interesting. For something to happen in your first year of professional baseball is pretty cool, especially for a guy like Justin Verlander.”
After driving from North Carolina to New Jersey, Clifford was in the lineup to make his Mets organizational debut on August 3, just two days after the trade. In his first at-bat, he hit a home run.
“He’s a shy, quiet kid, but he’s got a lot of confidence, you can tell by how he goes about his stuff,” Cyclones manager Chris Newell said. “Hits a homer his first at-bat, where else can we go from there?”
He finished his first game with the Cyclones 2-for-3 with two walks, two RBI and two runs scored — and a 6-3 Brooklyn win.
On the season in 93 between Low-A and High-A, Clifford is hitting .279/.385/.503, a .888 OPS, with 20 home runs, 18 doubles and 67 RBI. He’s the Mets No. 6 Prospect on MLB Pipeline’s
recently updated list, and while he’s not an MLB top-100 prospect yet, Sam Dykstra says he’s knocking on the door.
Dykstra, who is in charge of creating the Mets’ list for MLB Pipeline, said he has 20-to-25 homer potential that could be more as he continues to fill out. He said he thinks the bat will play, which is going to be the thing that gets people excited.
He also said the move from Asheville, a hitter-friendly ballpark, to Brooklyn which is the opposite, is only going to help him.
“You play in Asheville, you’re learning some bad habits, you’re gonna think all I have to do is elevate the ball,” Dykstra said. “Now all of a sudden you’re aiming at the beach, especially as a left-handed hitter, it’s not as easy to do that. You really have to focus even more on impact, so I think that’s gonna be interesting for him to watch.”
Defensively, Clifford is splitting time between left field and first base, but spending a little bit more time at first as of now. Brooklyn’s outfield is crowded right now though, with Alex Ramirez, Rhylan Thomas and Stanley Consuegra all seeing regular playing time, and Omar De Los Santos rotating in as well. Even Jett Williams, usually a shortstop, already has a couple of games in center field in the first two weeks since his promotion.
“I would just keep sending him out there to the outfield, because that’s where there’s more value,” Dykstra said. “If he’s gonna be a first baseman, he’s gonna have to hit a lot more than he is right now, or at least maintain this, what he was doing at Asheville, at basically every level. … If I were the Mets, I would try to give him as much time in the outfield as possible, especially knowing that Pete Alonso could be there for a while, he’s a franchise guy there at first.”
Clifford said he doesn’t care about what position he’s playing, just any way he can get in the lineup.
Mike Griffin, one of the founders of PRO5 Academy and the director of baseball development, spoke highly about his former player.
“He’s obviously one of the best players to come through our program,” Griffin said. “I would say the best way to describe Ryan is he’s a true professional. He loves the game. He studies the game. He has a high baseball IQ. He’s a great teammate. He’s a winner. He helps make the players around him better. He really soaks up every aspect of baseball and player development. He doesn’t take a day off.”
He detailed how Clifford evolved over the two seasons he played for him, going from someone who had a lot of power to a true all-around hitter. He played both first base and the outfield, as he has continued to do, and hit numerous big home runs in the playoffs.
The tools, Griffin said, stood out right away. He said he always had professional tools, but there was a point where he realized Clifford was not only going to go pro, but going to be a future major leaguer.
“It was when he was coming in early for some early work with some of the major league hitters that hit with us in the offseason, and he had the humility to take in some of the things that they were saying,” Griffin said. “He also had the ability to make the adjustment and work on it. There was no thought that he arrived. He just said man, I want to keep getting better. We began to see man, this guy is ready right now. He gets it. He gets what the lifestyle’s like, he gets what it takes to be successful now. He didn’t need the extra time in college to grow mentally and grow in maturity. He already had that.”
A top high school player in the country, Clifford was the No. 44 ranked player in the class of 2022 on Perfect Game, and the No. 92 player on MLB Pipeline’s pre-draft rankings, a list that includes college players.
With a college commitment to Vanderbilt University, he went unselected on the first day of the 2022 MLB draft, which includes the first two rounds. He then went unselected on the second day of the MLB draft, which includes rounds 3-to-10.
Finally, on day three, with the No. 343 overall pick, the Astros grabbed him.
“I know it was kind of shocking, because he was slated to go relatively high in the draft,” Griffin said. “And he had a minor ankle sprain that kind of kept him back over the end of the year a little bit, but we were kind of shocked that he fell that far down.”
After not being selected on the first day, Griffin said they expected him to end up at Vandy. Then, the Astros opened up the checkbook.
Clifford got a signing bonus of about $1.25 million, about equivalent to the slot value of the No. 59 overall pick. There wasn’t even a slot value for Clifford’s No. 343 overall pick. For anyone taken after round 10, every dollar over $150k counts against the team’s bonus pool, anything under that does not.
“Obviously, it was a great organization,” Clifford said. “They help develop their guys really well. I know they had a lot of homegrown talent, so it definitely made the decision easier for me. So at the end of the day, I just want to play professional baseball, and I was given an opportunity.”
Clifford said he is looking forward to continuing that opportunity with the Mets.
In 2022, he was playing high school baseball. In 2023, he was traded for a future first-ballot Hall-of-Famer.
“That’s a great sign, because it shows that people are valuing what he can do on the field and see him as a true big-time prospect, which I think he is,” Griffin said. “… So I think it’s an exciting opportunity because it shows an organization really values what he can do on the field to include him in that trade.”
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