Rochester Red Wings are playing an exciting and winning brand of baseball

Rochester Red Wings manager Matt LeCroy wasn’t kidding when he said just before the start of the 2022 season that this ballclub was going to be vastly more entertaining than the 2021 iteration.

Granted, last year’s Wings were one of the worst teams in all of Triple-A, so LeCroy couldn’t have gotten much more than even money had he bet his preseason prediction.

That said, a little more than a month into the season, he has proven to be absolutely correct.

The Wings, who swept a doubleheader Saturday afternoon from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, 9-2 and 7-6, are a fun watch.

They have speed and athleticism on the bases, more reliable pitching, and the improved at-bats we’re seeing up and down the lineup have resulted in a team batting average of .266, second best in the International League.

And if ever there was a sequence that illuminated how different this 17-12 Wings team is, I take you to the bottom of the fourth inning in Game 1.

Andrew Stevenson led off with a walk, and while Alfredo Rodriquez and Chris Herrmann were making outs, a persistent Stevenson stole second on his fourth attempt after the first three had been foiled by foul balls.

He then took third on a wild pitch by struggling Rail Riders starter Deivi Garcia - the one-time very high Yankees prospect who has taken a slide down the list the last couple years.

After Adrian Sanchez drew a walk, Cole Freeman doubled down the right-field line. Stevenson trotted home but Sanchez had to haul and he was able to score from first to give Rochester a 5-2 lead.

And if Sanchez’s hustle didn’t catch everyone’s eye, Josh Palacios’ sure did. He struck out on a pitch in the dirt but the ball got away from catcher David Freitas. Palacios exploded out of the box, ran as hard as he could, and he beat the throw to first to extend the inning.

Meanwhile, Freeman was already moving to third and when Freitas threw to first, Freeman kept going and he was able to beat the throw back to the plate for the Wings’ sixth run.

In this unattractive era of three-outcome baseball - home runs, walks, strikeouts - these Wings have been an outlier so far. They have the sixth-fewest strikeouts in the IL (very good), the fewest walks (not great) and the eighth-most homers (decent).

In other words, they put the ball in play, they hustle, they pay attention to the small details, and they’re winning ballgames.

Game 1: Wings 9, Rail Riders 2

► LeCroy has said on a few occasions how first baseman Joey Meneses lengthens the Wings lineup while providing some much-needed power, and that’s exactly what the native of Mexico has done. Especially lately.

Going into Saturday’s twinbill, over his previous 13 games, Meneses was hitting .377 with four homers, 14 RBI, and an absurd 1.121 OPS.

In the opener, he crushed a 405-foot homer to the deepest part of the park into a 15-mph breeze off Garcia for a 1-0 lead in the second. For the season, he’s now hitting .308 with an OPS of .893 and his six home runs are tied for sixth in the IL.

► Garcia continues to disappoint Yankee fans. He fell to 0-2 with an unsightly ERA of 9.17 as the Wings tagged him for four earned runs on four hits and three walks in just 3.2 innings.

► In another testament to the Wings’ hustle, in the third inning, catcher Chris Herrmann made a great play. Ronald Guzman hit a 107-mph rocket right back to pitcher Sterling Sharp who somehow managed to protect himself with his glove, which went flying off. The ball ricocheted back between the mound and the plate and Herrmann scurried out, picked it up and fired to first for the out.

► Sharp, Carson Teel, Sam Clay and Carl Edwards covered the seven innings for the Wings and gave up just four hits with no walks and six strikeouts, albeit against a Scranton lineup that is scuffling right now.

Game 2: Wings 7, Rail Riders 6 (10)

► Clarke Schmidt, who would be in the majors right now with most other clubs, but the deep and talented Yankees’ pitching staff has no room for him at the moment, started the nightcap. But he was on a pitch count and left in the third inning of a 1-1 tie with one out and the bases loaded.

Jose Mujica relieved and allowed one of Schmidt’s runners to score so his final line was two runs (one earned) on three hits and two walks with three whiffs.

► Miguel Andjujar, who similarly has no place to play in New York given the roster construction, went 0-for-6 combined in the two games while playing error-free in left field.

► The Wings saw a 2-1 lead turn into a 5-2 deficit when S/WB scored twice in each of the fourth and fifth innings off starter Logan Verrett and reliever Ben Braymer, the key blow a go-ahead Phillip Evans line-drive two-run homer to left off Verrett.

► Manny Banuelos then gave up three runs in the fifth which allowed Rochester to tie the game at 5-5. Yankees fans will remember that more than a decade ago, Banuelos and Dellin Betances were considered two of the top young pitching prospects when they were coming up. Betances went on to be solid, occasionally great reliever for the Yankees, but Banuelos never made it.

When the 31-year-old lefty originally made it to Triple-A Scranton in 2011, among his teammates were Betances, Francisco Cervelli, Ivan Nova, Kei Igawa, David Phelps and Adam Warren. Among the 2011 Red Wings he might have come across were Trevor Plouffe, Brian Dinkelman, Kyle Gibson, Liam Hendriks and Kevin Slowey.

► The Wings loaded the bases in each of the eighth and ninth innings and failed to get the run they needed to win, but finally in the 10th, with men on second and third one out, Palacios ended it with a single to right field.

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Rochester Red Wings sweep Scranton/Wilkes-Barre 9-2, 7-6