On Tuesday, we emptied the notebook on position players. For Wednesday, let’s let it rip on the pitching staff, including looks at the new pitching lab, why Adam Ottavino’s season was really different, what David Peterson and Tylor Megill have to prove, and what several relievers will work on this offseason.
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Pitching lab
Despite the changes in Mets’ leadership, the development plan for major-league pitchers seemed to stay on track. Always, the plan was for most of the Mets’ major-league pitchers to swing by the new pitching lab in Port St. Lucie. They did just that. The first wave to visit the lab, according to those who attended, consisted of Kodai Senga, Megill, Brooks Raley, Grant Hartwig, Joey Lucchesi, Drew Smith and a couple of others. More pitchers, like Peterson and Trevor Gott, were expected to follow.
Adam Ottavino
In 2021, there were just under 2,000 sliders thrown in Major League Baseball that broke horizontally at least 20 inches — what the sport now refers to as a sweeper. Adam Ottavino threw more than 10 percent of the league total.
This year, there were more than 3,500 sliders/sweepers thrown with that kind of break. Ottavino accounted for less than 1 percent of them. And so the right-hander, looking around the landscape of the league in July, understood the need for change.
“I don’t know whether to be flattered or annoyed,” he said. “I’m proud of the fact that people looked at the pitch I was throwing and modeled some of their changes after it. At the same time, it makes my job a little bit trickier.
“It was nice to be unique for a while.”
Sliders were hit harder around the league this season, but no team saw their sliders diminish in value more than the Mets. While Ottavino’s slider was not as valuable for him as it was last season, it still registered as a positive pitch thanks to some changes he made to his repertoire as the season progressed.
This ended up being the first season since 2012 that Ottavino threw any pitch more often than his slider (his two-seam sinker). And as the year went on, he leaned more and more on his changeup — especially to lefties — and his four-seamer. He also ditched his cutter about halfway through 2023.
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To Ottavino, it will be remembered as the year he figured out his changeup.
“I’ve had a hundred different changeup grips in my career,” he said. “I made an adjustment this offseason to my grip a little bit, to get my thumb on a seam, which is helping the ball stay in my hand just a hair longer and not pop out and be able to actually drive it to my target.
“It’s been 10 years of wanting a changeup, but the last two are the first two where I felt like I had a plus pitch. And then this year the ability to actually use it. It’s been a long time coming. I’m glad I never gave up on it.”
The turning point, Ottavino said, was a June 14 at-bat against Giancarlo Stanton, when he tripled up on the changeup to get a key groundout with a runner in scoring position.
“You remember certain at-bats,” he said. “I was able to go to my fourth pitch and get a really good hitter out. That right there probably put my confidence over the edge.”
Shortly after that game in June, Ottavino mentioned how the changeup was especially helpful against veteran right-handed hitters he’d faced many times: “If you notice the guys I’ve thrown it to, it’s not just anybody. I’ve thrown it to Stanton, (Paul) Goldschmidt, (Nolan) Arenado — they’re all great hitters. They’ve all proven to me they can hit my pitches. Sometimes that’s where the need comes in.”
That changeup also helped Ottavino hold lefties to a .217 average, his best since 2018. However, he did walk them at a higher rate than last season and he gave up five homers to lefty batters — as many as he’d allowed in the prior four seasons combined. Three of those homers came on the cutter, which is why he shelved it. He allowed only one homer to a lefty after June 7.
Ottavino has always been aggressive in the offseason with reworking his mix; he was an early adapter of pitch-tracking technology. But for the first time in a little bit, his plans for the winter are smaller. He’ll focus early on velocity. He’ll try to reshape his four-seam fastball.
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“I’m actually pretty happy overall with my repertoire. I feel like I have pretty much every pitch out there that I can throw from my arm slot,” he said. “But you’ve got to get it to the real thing. There’s no proving ground like the big leagues. You’ve got to get in there to see.”
David Peterson
After the immediate results of the trade deadline yielded a winless road trip and the Mets returned home in early August, pitching coach Jeremy Hefner led a meeting about the uncertainty of 2024. Pitchers such as Megill and Peterson comprised the target audience. Those who attended remember Hefner pointing out that little was guaranteed for most of the Mets’ pitchers next year, but he also said that they could change the narrative about who they were.
For Peterson, the message seemed to stick. Though he holds a minor-league option next year, he’s running out of chances to prove himself. He’s 28. He’s arbitration-eligible. He’s no longer some prospect. Thus, he needed to perform.
Over the final month and a half (33 2/3 innings), Peterson had a 3.74 ERA/2.99 FIP. He impressed a few rival evaluators by rediscovering his slider and throwing strikes with all of his pitches. Over his final six starts, Peterson maintained an 8.4 percent walk rate. Throughout his career, that figure has always hovered over 10 percent. Peterson has no guaranteed spot in New York’s rotation, but the conviction he showed late in the season showed he’s capable of changing his story.
Tylor Megill
After a dazzling final start to the season, Megill drew headlines by naming his incipient splitter, modeled on Senga’s ghost fork, as the “American spork.” In displaying how he throws the pitch, Megill showed off just how large and flexible his fingers are; it almost looked as if he could create a 90-degree angle between his index and middle fingers.
While that kind of flexibility is great for a splitter, it caused some problems for Megill with his fastball this season. And following a solid finish to his year, that fastball will be the primary focus for him this winter.
Hefner said Megill’s large hands can make it difficult for him to use a consistent grip on his fastball, which cost him both velocity and rise on it this season. His fastball dropped about three-quarters of a mile per hour this season, and its vertical approach angle — a measure of its rise — went from solidly above average to well below.
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“The fastball vert is really inconsistent, which makes his ability to punch people out inconsistent,” Hefner said. “That’s why you see a steady drop in the strikeout rate.”
A strikeout rate that was above 25 percent in each of Megill’s first two seasons was down around 18 percent in 2023.
Megill’s focus last offseason was getting healthy after dealing with shoulder issues throughout 2022. The club hopes he can spend this winter thinking more about building blocks than his health.
“We’re going to work on some things in the offseason to get him back to where he was in ’21,” Hefner said. “He has a stronger shoulder now and is in a much better spot physically where we can challenge his body to do some things differently to get back to when he was dominant.”
Drew Smith
“I feel like this year,” Smith said, “nothing I’ve done has felt natural.”
Smith took it upon himself last winter to tweak his mechanics in the hopes of staying healthier throughout a full season. But by late May, he and the Mets decided those changes weren’t working for his stuff and instead switched back to his previous delivery.
As a result, Smith never felt totally comfortable.
“Each time it felt new again,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to just focusing on that one thing in the offseason and getting back to feeling comfortable.”
Smith hopes a more normal offseason will allow him to restore the slight dip in velocity he experienced last season, one that made his aim to be more fastball-reliant less effective. Hefner would like Smith to embrace the diversity of his mix.
“Drew has an extremely high ceiling,” Hefner said, “it’s just the consistency this year was different from what we saw last year.”
While home runs have always been Smith’s bugaboo, the bigger issue this past season was the walks that often preceded them. His walk rate jumped by almost 50 percent compared to last year, all the way up to 11.9 percent of opposing hitters this season.
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“When you’re walking more guys, you get in bad counts, and that’s when home runs happen more often,” Smith said. “The home runs happen, but I’d obviously like to limit them. Command and limiting walks will go a long way toward that.”
“We’re trying to end the at-bat quicker,” Hefner said. “Yes, we’re trying to strike guys out, but we’re trying to get weak contact and we’re not trying to get to that 3-2 count where he feels like he has to make that perfect pitch because he’s in a one-run game and he ends up walking a guy.”
The Mets have a decision to make on Smith, who is arbitration-eligible for the final time this winter. MLB Trade Rumors estimates Smith would earn about $2.3 million in arbitration. On one hand, that’s a lot for a reliever who posted a 4.15 ERA and 1.40 WHIP last season, losing trust in important spots. On the other, the Mets can easily afford it if they believe Smith can prove as useful as he did for long stretches of 2021 and 2022.
“I’ve felt good and felt healthy, and that will be a good note going into the offseason where I can work on getting back to my old self and my old command,” Smith said. “I think I’ll be in a better spot.”
Trevor Gott
The Mets like Gott’s four-pitch mix coming out of the bullpen — one he utilized more broadly over the season’s final two months.
Overall impressions of Gott’s time with the Mets were likely framed by both the cost to acquire him (the Mets took on the $3.8 million owed Chris Flexen while promptly designating him for assignment to bring on Gott; between the two players’ salaries and the luxury-tax penalties, New York paid $8.3 million for Gott’s 34 appearances) and the seven runs he allowed in his first seven games with the Mets.
From that point, however, Gott permitted just eight runs in 27 outings, 23 of which were scoreless. Gott evened out his pitch mix, reducing the usage of his slider while working in more curveballs and changeups. It’s rare for a reliever to have the kind of four-pitch mix Gott can deploy.
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“If I’m throwing them all for strikes, they have to look for four pitches, and that’s harder than looking for two,” he said. “The more I throw them, the more comfortable I am throwing them and the more I’ll throw them for strikes.”
There’s a reason most relievers don’t throw four pitches, though, and it’s because it can be tough to stay on top of all of them during a busy season.
“I’ve found throughout my career that I’ll go on spurts where I’m not throwing all my pitches,” Gott said, “and you get into a situation where, ‘I could throw this right now but I haven’t thrown it in a game in a month.’ So at least showing them the curveball and the changeup at least every other outing, obviously, when I need it, it makes me a better pitcher.”
“I just really like his compete (level),” Hefner said. “He’s got a unique delivery. It’s a quick arm, it’s pitchability. He can do different shapes. He’s creative out there in a lot of ways.”
Gott, who turned 31 in August, set career highs in appearances (64) and innings (58). Like Smith, he’s arbitration-eligible one more time, with MLB Trade Rumors estimating a salary of around $2 million in 2024. For a shallow bullpen, that seems like a good fit.
Gott hopes so. The Mets are the sixth team he’s played for in eight major-league seasons.
“Especially for relievers, it’s so hard to find somewhere where you stay,” he said. “It would be nice to go in and know where I’m going to be.”
Grant Hartwig
Hartwig answered one of his biggest questions entering the year: Could he get left-handed hitters out?
With the help of a cutter he added in the offseason, Hartwig limited lefties to a .159 average and just two extra-base hits while in the majors this season.
“It’s not a typical cutter, especially coming from my arm slot. I think hitters had a little bit of trouble with it,” Hartwig said. “What’s good about it is it opens up everything else so I can use the cutter to get to my sinker, to get to my slider. It gives me a bigger window of opportunity with left-handed hitters.”
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The only problem for Hartwig? The success didn’t translate to righties, who he’d dominated in the minors. Right-handed hitters posted a .298 average and .821 OPS off the rookie this season.
“I think I allowed some hitters to get too comfortable in the box against me,” Hartwig said, adding that he may have leaned too heavily on his sinker against righties. (He threw sinkers 51 percent of the time and sliders 43 percent of the time to righties.) “It’s more so just being on the attack. If I can get a hitter defensive, sometimes that gives you a little more room for error. If they’re comfortable in there and you put yourself in tough positions count-wise, it gives them more confidence to get off their A swing.”
You learn about getting ahead in the count the first day you touch a Little League mound. But that lesson gets hammered home, literally, in the majors.
“Mistakes get hit and more damage is done, obviously, in hitters’ counts,” Hartwig said. “It’s more magnified here because the damage here is usually not a double in the gap; it’s a ball going over the fence.”
Hartwig was one of several big-league pitchers who visited the Mets’ new pitching lab in Port St. Lucie at the end of the season. A player who got his degree in microbiology at Miami University, Hartwig has always taken a scientific approach to pitching. That cutter originated in his experiments over the last offseason.
John Curtiss
The introduction of an automated strike zone in Triple A was the primary driver of a jump in walk rate and ERA at the minor-league level. One player in the Mets system impacted significantly was Curtiss.
The biggest difference between the major-league strike zone and the one generated by the ABS system came at the top of the strike zone; in the minors, pitches above the belt were called balls and not strikes. For a pitcher who resides in the top of the zone with his fastball like Curtiss, that was transformative.
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Curtiss’ ERA while in Syracuse this past season was 7.17. His WHIP was 1.688. He walked about 10 percent of opposing hitters. All three numbers were a lot better while in the majors, back with the strike zone he was used to.
“It’s just a different game,” Curtiss said in August of Triple-A baseball in 2023. “It’s probably two or three balls off the top of the strike zone, and I’ve been a guy that consistently pitches at the top of the strike zone. I’m trying to adapt and pitch differently.”
That was a delicate process for Curtiss: You want to pitch well enough in Triple A to earn a big-league promotion, but you don’t want to desert the pitching style that works better once in the majors.
“I’ve learned that it’s really important to focus on the process when you’re in Triple A instead of the results,” he said. “You’ve got to be a realist about whether that will play in the big leagues or not. If you’re missing by half a ball at the top of the zone, you know that’s not necessarily a walk (in the majors).”
One staffer identified Curtiss as an under-the-radar arm who could help the Mets more than expected in 2024, once he’ll be even more removed from Tommy John surgery. After another surgery to remove a loose body in his right elbow in August, Curtiss is expected to be fully ready for spring training.
(Photo of Adam Ottavino: Brad Penner / USA Today)