Staten Island Yankees president Will Smith says the team has hit a home run in the sales department with its rebranding of the team to the Pizza Rats for five Saturday games this season.



Smith told the Advance Wednesday afternoon that the club has sold eight times the amount of merchandise it sold in all of 2017 due to the rebranding.

Pizza Rats merchandise is being sold at pizzaratsbaseball.com. The six new Pizza Rats logos have been designed by Brandiose. In addition to being sold online, merchandise which includes New Era baseball caps, hoodies and T-shirts, will be sold at Richmond County Bank Ballpark at St. George, the home of the Staten Island Yankees.



Smith and the team have received some criticism because of the five-game rebranding, but he says most everything he's been hearing about the rebranding has been positive.





"Everything that we've hearing has been great, very positive," said Smith. "The folks at Minor League Baseball tell us they been hearing positive things, and all out tracking sentiments have been positive."



Smith says the Pizza Rats rebranding for those five nights is just another promotion at the ballpark.



"We are a minor league team and promotions is what we do and this is just another promotion for us," explained Smith. "There are no plans to permanently change the name of the team.



"I just wanted to have fun with this."



June 23 is the first time the team will be known at the Pizza Rats. The other dates are July 7, July 14, July 21 and Aug. 4, according to the team's website.



In 2016, the Staten Island Yankees sought a new team name to create a hometown identity, and the Pizza Rats were one of five nicknames that topped a list. The others were Bridge Trolls, Heroes, Killer Bees and Rock Pigeons.



The team then let the fans decide which nickname they liked the best in a "Name the Team" contest and the Pizza Rats won by overwhelming margin.



The Staten Island Yankees later backed off on the rebranding idea, but said they would revisit it at another time.



Fast forward to now when Smith and Co. decided on the five-game Pizza Rats promotion.



"We thought we had a pretty good rebranding campaign and we thought it (the Pizza Rats name) was more than enough," said Smith.



It's not the first time the Staten Island Yankees will be called something different.



In August of 2015, the local team played as the Staten Island Direwolves on "Game of Thrones" night at Richmond County Bank Ballpark at St. George. Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin was the guest of honor and a record-setting crowd of 7,529 showed up at the Ballpark.



Smith admitted the nickname Pizza Rats is polarizing and will take some getting used to.



"We are a minor league franchise and use promotions all the time to sell our product," he said. "That's the way it is all over the country."