York Revolution reloaded and ready for 2024 baseball season
The Revs officially begin their 17th season on Thursday at home, and they'll look to build on their 2023 success.
Thomas KendzioraTrey Martin says he never thought about playing baseball anywhere else in 2024.
The 31-year-old outfielder officially signed in early February to spend a second season with the York Revolution. He was one of the club’s first two additions for the upcoming campaign, joining returning pitcher Tom Sutera.
Martin cited his rapport with Revs second-year manager Rick Forney and hitting coach Derek Wolfe as a key to his decision to return. He enjoyed a successful first season in York, hitting .282 with a career-high 19 homers and a league-leading 46 stolen bases in just 48 attempts. He lives within walking distance of the downtown WellSpan Park and didn’t have to move this offseason.
“It was an easy decision to come back,” Martin said.
Martin and Sutera will be rejoined by outfielder Jacob Rhinesmith and pitchers Zach Neff, Will Carter and Nelvin Correa from the 2023 team, which posted a 71-54 record but missed the Atlantic League playoffs. Other members of last year’s group, however, have dispersed across the continent in search of the next career step, while some opted to move on from baseball.
Left-handed pitcher Nick Raquet, the Revs’ ace last summer, signed a minor-league deal with the St. Louis Cardinals in January. A large swath of the Atlantic League, meanwhile, is now playing in the Mexican League, which raised its limit on foreign players from six to 20 and added two teams for the 2024 season. As a result, teams like York will have a particularly young roster with less high-level affiliated experience.
“We’re happy for those guys to go play somewhere else and have an opportunity to advance their careers a little bit, but it kind of forces us to bring in some new people,” Forney said. “We really like the guys that we have in place — they’re pretty young, very athletic, the pitching looks very good — but you never know. You’ve got to play the games.”
Martin arrived in York last year unfamiliar with everyone on the team. Now he’ll have a handful of second-year teammates in addition to an incumbent coaching staff. The Atlanta native also worked out with left-handed pitching signee Ethan Lindow a couple years ago in Georgia.
“It makes it easier,” Martin said of having familiar faces in the clubhouse. “You don’t have to learn a bunch of new names. They know how you play, you know how they play, you know routines and what people are about and stuff like that.”
The regular season begins Thursday evening in York, with the Revs welcoming the brand-new Hagerstown Flying Boxcars. A 126-game schedule is set to conclude Sunday, Sept. 15.
Heavy hearts: York’s 2024 season will begin on a somber note, as the organization will honor co-founder Brooks Robinson with a pregame ceremony on Thursday. Robinson, the Hall of Fame third baseman who starred for the Baltimore Orioles from 1955-77, died in September at age 86. He began his professional career with the York White Roses in 1955 and was long involved with efforts to bring baseball back to York.
The first 1,000 fans at Thursday’s game will receive a replica of Robinson’s White Roses jersey. The Brooks Robinson Foundation charity auction, which launched online last week, will close at 9 p.m. Thursday. Robinson’s son, Brooks David Robinson Jr., will be on hand for the ceremony.
More:York County remembers Brooks Robinson, who played a key role in establishing the Revolution
Robinson’s No. 5 has been retired by the Revs since the team’s inception. A statue of Robinson signing autographs for young baseball players stands on Brooks Robinson Plaza outside the stadium.
“Whenever Brooks was here, he was incredibly gracious with fans and particularly young people — he never refused an autograph and never acted annoyed that people were interrupting him,” Revolution President Eric Menzer said in a press release last month. “To call Brooks a great ballplayer demeans his memory. Brooks was a great man, who was also a great ballplayer. We were extraordinarily lucky to have him as part of our organization.”
The Revs are also mourning the death of pitcher Ronny Garcia, who signed with the team in February but was killed in a traffic accident in the Dominican Republic over the weekend. He was 24. Garcia’s father also died in the crash.
Garcia signed with the Houston Astros as a 16-year-old and pitched in the organization from 2017-23, posting a 3.42 ERA across 122 professional games. Forney said he was “excited to get my eyes on him” when Garcia signed with York.
“He was a talented pitcher and a beloved teammate,” wrote the Fayetteville Woodpeckers, the Astros’ Single-A affiliate with whom Garcia spent parts of three seasons. “Our thoughts are with his family during this difficult time."
Unfinished business: The Atlantic League splits the season in half to decide its playoff field. The first-place teams in the North and South divisions after 63 games will make the postseason, where they’ll either be joined by second-half division winners or a wild-card team if they finish first again.
The Revs were one strike away from clinching the first-half North title on July 7, 2023, but the Lexington Counter Clocks took the lead on a bloop single and secured a 7-6 win, which allowed the Long Island Ducks to claim a playoff spot via tiebreaker. York followed a 37-26 first half with a 34-28 second half but once again finished second, this time behind rival and eventual repeat champion Lancaster.
“We played really good baseball last year all the way through,” Forney said. “It just unfortunately kind of boiled down to a bad 20 minutes in the last game of the first half, (but) … we were 1-4 to start the year and all that stuff comes back to catch up to you.
“But all in all, no complaints — we had a good year last year.”
Martin and Rhinesmith both spent time at the top of the Revs’ batting order last season and figure to be key pieces again. The lineup’s only MLB experience comes from third baseman Colton Welker, who played for the Colorado Rockies in 2021 and is a .303 career minor-league hitter. First baseman Mason Martin, a former Pirates farmhand, has 122 professional homers in six seasons. Outfielder Rudy Martin has 191 steals in eight pro campaigns. And outfielder Donovan Casey reached Triple-A in the Nationals organization after being acquired in the 2021 Max Scherzer/Trea Turner trade.
Left-handed pitcher Aaron Fletcher appeared in 19 MLB games for the Mariners and Pirates between 2020 and 2022; York plans to give the longtime reliever a chance to start. Righty Chris Vallimont, a former PSAC standout at Mercyhurst, made MLB debut for the Orioles last year. The right-handed Sutera and Jon Olsen, as well as lefties Lindow, Neff and Will Stewart, will get a chance in the rotation. Righties Correa, Carter, Adam Stauffer, Alex Valverde and Moises Lugo hope to become fixtures in the bullpen.
York led the Atlantic League with 797 runs scored in 2023 and was fifth with a 5.30 ERA. Forney is high on the arm talent of this year’s younger staff, but he knows nothing is guaranteed.
“Knock on wood, we’ve got good pitching right now,” the manager said. “We’ve got to stay healthy. It’s got to look the way in the games that it’s looked (in the) preseason — if it does, we should be OK from that standpoint. We have a lot more arm talent than we had last year, but things can happen.”
WellSpan Park has a new 1,700-square-foot video board in center field that boasts more than triple the size and double the brightness of the previous board. A new Kentucky bluegrass playing surface was installed after a 2023 vandalism incident and has drawn rave reviews. And the Revs will welcome fans with their usual assortment of promotions and giveaways throughout the season.
“It shows they care. The ballpark looks fantastic — the video board looks great, the surface looks good, and it’s recognized by everybody,” Forney said. “We just had an exhibition game here against Southern Maryland on Sunday and they all commented on how great the place looks. So it helps in my recruiting, because I feel like we’ve got the best ballpark in the league, and when you come out here and you see it, it shows.”
All the pieces are in place. Now it’s time for five months of baseball.
More:Central York stars headline York-Adams League boys' basketball all-state selections
More:York-Adams League releases boys' tennis singles, doubles tournament brackets
More:Penn State York baseball carries momentum into PSUAC tournament
