It was perfect timing; I moved to Syracuse, and so did the Mets.

They had been looking for a new location for the their top farm club for what seemed like ages, trying to get out of the far-off Las Vegas market. Then an opportunity opened up in Syracuse, and the Mets jumped at it.

Initially, I was suspicious. Syracuse has seen declining attendance of late and routinely comes up at the bottom of the AAA rankings for fans coming to the park. Would the Mets buy the team just to keep in town a few years and then bail for a more-lucrative market closer to the city? It seemed telling that, rather than enter into an agreement with the team, the Mets bought the club from its owners, a group of invested shareholders from the community headed by a board.

But recently, current and future Governor Cuomo announced that the Mets would be staying in Syracuse for the next 25 years. And specifically, the AAA team would be continue to remain, which is huge. That guarantee is big.

But, I don’t think the Mets name will be sticking around for very long. The Wilpons, the owner of the Mets, maintain that the plan was always to have them be the Mets. Where’s the benefit in that, though?

I can only see few positives to this. The Mets are trying to market themselves to the region and expand their influence outside the tri-state area, so this is good brand exposure. Another is that it quickly answers the question “who kept AAA baseball in town when it was in danger of leaving?” And one universal positive is that it rids the sports landscape of another Native-appropriated nickname, which (and I hope I’m right) the Mets probably wanted to get away from, having enough bad things to be associated with already.

Naturally, there are far more negatives to the name change, first and foremost being a show of disrespect to the community. The Chiefs name had been around for more than 80 years; what kind of a how of good faith is that to enter into a community and immediately strip away the name that a few generations of fans had grown up with. They were even one of the first professional teams that tried to cut ties with their Native nickname, changing the name to SkyChiefs in 1997 before reverting back and adopting the train motif in 2007. It’s a civic institution was taken away.

Further, the “Syracuse Mets” moniker goes against the psuedo-revolution of wacky and community-sourced names that Minor League Baseball teams have been trending toward for at least 20 years. Minor-league teams that have debuted or re-desgigned themselves in the past few seasons all have several similarities: a wacky animal- or food-themed nickname, a regional location, a Brandiose-created logo, an emphasis on family fun. Fayetteville Woodpeckers, Rocket City Trash Pandas, Rocky Mountain Oysters (ok, maybe).

Naming your new farm team (especially your AAA farm team) after you MLB team in 2018 is like building a cookie-cutter stadium or wearing teal and black. It’s just not done anymore. The last team I can think of to be named after their parent club was the Buies Creek Astros of the Carolina League, and that was only because they had to wait for their stadium to be built in Fayetteville. The Gwinnett Braves (previously the Richmond Braves for 43 seasons) even changed their name (to the Stripers) in the past few years.

Putting their own name on their AAA club not only signals a lack of creativity on the part of the franchise, but it also throws the negative associations of the MLB team to the MiLB team. If there’s one thing the Mets have been known for in the past decade, it’s for mismanagement, including their minor league system. There’s a reason they weren’t allowed back in Buffalo before being forced out to Vegas. They can’t manage their major league team, they can’t manage their minor league teams, so why remind people of who is meddling with their hometown team?

There are other reasons as well. Renaming the team always seems like a cash grab, no matter the level or sport; frankly, I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often. And–I’m surprised I left this off until now–“Mets” has nothing to do with Syracuse, nothing to do with the community, and barely anything to do with upstate New York. Yes, they’re trying to raise brand awareness in a place they don’t have much of a presence in, but there has to be a better, less-intrusive way.

These are the reasons I think there’s going to be a name-the-team contest sometime in the next five years. It would be a gesture of goodwill and signal to the city that this was all just to get awareness of the Mets out there and to reset the club from its days with the Nationals. It would make sense. Only then would changing the team name make sense and be acceptable, I suppose.

So while I applaud the Mets for getting rid of a Native-associated nickname, and I’m super excited to be living 10 minutes from my favorite team’s top minor-league affiliate, they made a misstep slapping their name on the club. Fortunately for us, I really don’t think it’ll be around for too long.

At least the Salt Potatoes will still be around. Why not make that permanent?