The Winter Meetings are underway and the swirling rumors are getting louder and louder. But none are real as of this writing. So I choose not to speculate anymore than we have in the past week. Today is about something much different than speculation about the future – it is a recognition of the steps that led up to this point.
The New York Mets have always been a team that features great pitching. From Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman to Dwight Gooden and Ron Darling to deGrom, Scherzer, and Verlander the Mets have always had some great arms. They have also had many supplementary players from back end starters to middle relievers, and those players are the ones that can sometimes make the difference if you can get every ounce of potential out of them.
The Mets have had a remarkably consistent coaching staff guiding their pitching. Jeremy Hefner has been in the pitching coach position since the start of the 2020 season. In many walks of life, five years going on six in a job is not a newsworthy tenure, but in professional sports that is quite an accomplishment. Hefner has worked under three different managerial regimes (Luis Rojas, Buck Showalter, Carlos Mendoza) and 4+ different GM regimes (Brady Van Wagonen, Jared Porter, Billy Eppler, David Stearns plus interim GMs Zack Scott and Sandy Alderson in 2021). That is a very remarkable feat, as new managers and/or GMs like to bring in their own trusted staff. All of them decided to stick with Hefner which speaks volumes about his respect in the organization.
Jeremy Hefner was a MLB pitcher for the Mets in 2012 and 2013, compiling a career record of 8-15 with a 4.65 ERA and a 1.32 WHIP. He was drafted by the San Diego Padres (fifth round 2007 draft pick) and spent time in the minors with the Padres, Pirates, and Cardinals. After the 2013 season, he had some arm problems, rehabbed in the minors, underwent Tommy John surgery, and never made it back to the majors before calling it a career in January 2017. What he couldn’t do with his arm he could do with his head, so he launched into a career on the sidelines as an advanced scout for the Twins in the 2017 season, then assistant pitching coach in 2019, and then on to the Mets job after the 2019 season.
Hefner has had an extremely difficult role to fill with the Mets. He inherited a rotation of Jacob deGrom, Marcus Stroman, Stephen Matz, Michael Wacha, and Rick Porcello during the COVID-shortened season. After the unprecedented COVID season, he also has had to deal with a plethora of injuries, an influx of young pitchers like Tylor Megill and David Peterson, and the tenures of future hall of famers deGrom, Max Scherzer, and Justin Verlander. Hefner has weathered the rollercoaster of Edwin Diaz’ Mets career, the Seth Lugo starter vs reliever dilemma, and many other issues and still marches on.
One of the more remarkable things that happened during Hefner’s tenure has been the introduction of the “pitching lab” in St. Lucie. Here state-of-the-art technology fuses sensor data with performance analysis to shape the way pitchers perform. No longer do pitching coaches rely on the passed down wisdom of “how you grip your curveball”. It is now about arm angles, spin rates, force plates, and velocity vectors. Hefner has led this transformation very successfully as evidenced by the career renaissance of Sean Manaea and Luis Severino. According to FanGraphs, the Mets’ pitching staff was the most valuable in the league in September when the team made its push to the playoffs. I can’t give him all the credit here, but I can certainly respect the fact that he was able to manage through the transition to technology while balancing the players’ styles and egos.
Jeremy Hefner has a long way to go to eclipse the record for longest tenured pitching coach (18.5 years by Don Cooper for the Chicago White Sox) but he has certainly earned himself some job security with his performance over the last five years. Hats off to Hefner!
[And now everyone wants to talk about Soto!!]
