10
2010
A Victim of Circumstance
An article by 
When I first heard rumbling during Spring Training that pitching phenom prospect Jenrry Mejia may be brought up with the big club to make Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya look good…erm, uh…I mean of course to get Mejia adjusted to major league hitting, well, I was dead set against the idea. See, while the Mets have traditionally played in a pitcher-friendly dimensional park and have had a rich pitching history, their history of handling prospects is not so great. I won’t insult your intelligence by bringing up the likes of Tim Leary or Generation K.
When it was obvious that Mejia wasn’t quite working out well and his talents weren’t being fully utilized in the majors, thank goodness Mets management saw the error in their ways and sent him back down to work on his endurance in the minors. Most recently, he was sent to the minors, had “shoulder soreness,” now scratched with “rotator cuff strain,” but should be back and working on his stamina in no time.
(Jenrry Mejia photo credit to Sharon Chapman)
However, it did make me think of a former Mets pitching prospect whom the Mets mistreated, misjudged then quickly cast aside when it no longer suited them. I hoped that Mejia would not go that route and it looks like he won’t, thank goodness.
That pitcher I speak of, though, is Aaron Heilman. Aaron “F” Heilman, as some have taken to calling him in the Mets lexicon.
By now, most of you are aware that Heilman, a former University of Notre Dame pitcher, has been recently tapped to be the closer for the Arizona Diamondbacks. In typical Coop fashion, I joked that it might be better for the D-Backs to “just forfeit.”
My joking wasn’t so much a reflection on Heilman’s abilities. To this day, I truly believe that the Mets destroyed his chances of being taken seriously as a starter, which he had shown many times he had the goods to be, and is being groomed to be in a position that his psyche will not be able to handle.
My philosophy with Heilman is this: his psyche was more tailored to be a starter. When he comes into a game in the first inning, there are zeroes across the board. If he gives up a three-run home run, say, in the second inning, guess what? There are probably at least four more innings the team can make that up to him. If he’s coming into a game with two out, two on and the tying run at the plate, well…we all know too well what would happen in those instances with Heilman. There’s less of a margin of error, therefore causing a more pressure-filled situation.
My point is, as a starter, which the Mets were convinced he would not serve in, he was not as bad as some people would think.
Friend-of-Coop and Mets blogger Joe Janish from Mets Today has been an unabashed supporter of Heilman. I remember quite distinctly when he and I were having an off-the-cuff conversation where he said he believed Heilman was one of the best pitchers in the National League. When I scoffed at the notion, I was pretty much brainwashed the way most of us Mets fans were, regarding Heilman’s development. HE ONLY HAS TWO PITCHES!!! HE IS MORE VALUABLE AS A RELIEVER! HE DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH PITCHES TO GO A FULL GAME. Etc, etc.
Not so. Janish, in my estimation, is not just a Heilman proponent but has done extensive research on the pitches he did have (Janish is also a player/coach, so I do tend to take his baseball critiques seriously). In an email exchange we had where I asked him to summarize Heilman’s pitches, Janish writes: “He always threw a hard sinking, good moving fastball, an outstanding changeup, and an above-average slider. His ‘changeup’ was actually two pitches — an ‘OK’ change that moved away from LH hitters and a forkball that sunk straight down that he used mostly vs. RH hitters. And his ‘fastball’ includes a straight four-seamer, a sinker that goes in on RH hitters’ hands, and a tailing two-seamer that runs away from RHs/into LHs. But as a reliever he pretty much focused on three of those pitches.”
In one of my favorite blog posts on Heilman written ever, Janish disputes some of the Heilman myths, circa 2007. The big four included: Heilman is more valuable to the team as a reliever than a starter; Heilman does not have good numbers as a starter; Heilman doesn’t throw enough pitches to be a starter (see above where he explained that myth away); and Heilman is a selfish whiner with a bad attitude. Now for the arguments set above, we see that as a reliever, he wasn’t able to use most of his pitches or get into a groove using them, so that ties into him not being able to throw enough pitches to be a starter.
What was also interesting is that up to 2007, his numbers as a starter were pretty solid, at least in the small sample set enough to give him a whirl or more of a chance than the Mets actually did:
7 GS/ 42 IP / 34 K / 12BB / 4.37 ERA / 1.19 WHIP / 2-3 record / 1 CG (SH)
Not atrocious as the media or the Mets brass would have you think. Not phenomenal either…but decent enough to be a strong back of the rotation starter (which I’d like to point out is what the Mets were missing in the last few weeks of 2007 and 2008 while Heilman was languishing in the bullpen).
Also, I never bought into the whole selfish whiner myth either. This is why I call Heilman a “victim of circumstance.” Think about us at our day jobs. Let’s say you are looking for more responsibility, and your boss tells you if you continue to excel at your current role, you’ll get a promotion or a different role. Then as time goes on, you become a little too good at your role and you are told that you are now too valuable to vacate the role. However, when the role you feel you are better suited for opens up, management puts someone else in who is less-than-qualified, only because they feel your contributions are better suited in the role you are already in.
Pretty frustrating, right? Well, my theory on Aaron Heilman is he WAS that guy who was “pigeonholed,” and jerked around. Think about how many times the Mets put someone in the starting rotation (Jose Lima ring a bell in 2006?) when Heilman could have and should have been starting. By that time, the damage had been done.
No, he doesn’t see himself as a starter, and neither do the teams he plays on. Quite frankly, he might be in need of a shrink more so than Oliver Perez. And it’s sad, since as you can see by Janish’s research, Heilman had a lot of promise as a starting pitcher. His numbers were nothing short of outstanding at the University of Notre Dame. For brevity sake, I will use his last year at UND which was 2001, prior to being drafted by the Mets. In 15 games started, he boasted a 15-0 record, 1.74 ERA, 0.89 WHIP, 111 Ks in 114 IP.
Prior to that, he had a low-3ish ERA and over-.500 W/L record. He was an innings eater too! (Go figure)
Far be it for me to rehash the past or wonder “what could have been.” However, I know I had to laugh when I heard that Aaron Heilman is now the Diamondbacks closer. Not because I thought that the D-Backs must be so bad that Heilman is their best option as closer (well, maybe I did think that). Currently, he has three saves with a 2-3 record for the D-Backs.
What I really thought was, in a roundabout fashion, that the Mets got it right with a prospect this time. Aaron Heilman has become a cautionary tale for messing with pitcher’s mechanics when they could have excelled in other roles and been more valuable to the team in the long term.
**Many thanks to Joe Janish for his excellent research, spot-on commentary and fighting the good fight in defense of Aaron Heilman.**
About the Author: Taryn Cooper
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Great article. Thanks.
A small footnote on Aaron’s background — Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects ranked him at #78 in 2002 and at #45 in 2003. Some folks saw a emerging quality pitcher in Heilman before the Mets did their deed.
My personal view is that Aaron showed his fortitude and class when he was held in place in the bullpen by Mets’ management at the same time he was being booed by our fans. He was gritty and wasn’t a whiner.
Belatedly but with conviction, I say to Aaron, “Thanks.”
Coop, did u slip into the wrong hot tub? You are making a few valuable points; but u are aiming at the wrong target, in my opinion. Aaron Heilman was just one more victim of Jeff Wilpon’s amateurish tinkering that culminated with his personal hiring of Rick Peterson as the independent pitching guru/GM for the entire franchise, all levels with total autonomy reporting directly to Jeff in complete and total control over ALL pitching related matters throughout the entire NYM organization thus commenced the PETERSONIZATION of the New York Mets. Conjoined with the previous flawed Phillips drafting policy that no one can ever foresee what future positional needs will be & the most useful currency for acquiring said needs is pitching. That thought process gave birth to the Phillips’ draft policy of targeting amateur affordable pitching through all draft phases which compiled a roster of various pitching talents from very good to mediocre & barely serrvicable; but skipped sublime, outstanding & can’t miss as UNAFFORDABLE RISKS. Since MLB has no defined responsibilities for a SEPARATE PITCHING GENERAL MANAGER, THE TASK OF CONTACTING & NEGOTIATING WITH OTHER CLUBS FOR THE PURPOSE OF JETTISONING UNDESIRABLE PITCHING ASSETS or acquiring better ones via trades fell upon the acceptable venue, the GM(Phillips,Duquette,Minaya), performing needed transactions at the behest of Peterson, thus top pitching assets that rebelled against modifying their styles to meld into Peterson clones FEATURING sinkers,sliders,changes from cookie-cutter deliverioes & DISCARDING risers,curves from uniquely developed functional mechanics. despite the loss of Kazmir, Bell & Lindstrum for “failure to comply”. Peterson was still allowed the freedom of decision regarding Heilman’s usage & roll fulfillment.
While it was an established fact that Jeff Wilpon desired Randolph’s head on a stake as payment for the ’07 demise the assumption that Minaya thwarted his early attempts as ALL contract eating scenerio ecisins rest with Fred alone. Willie’s ‘racial implication interview fell heavily on Jeff’s side of the arguement. faced with an inevitable loss over Willie, Omar exacted his price in dismissing Jeff’s ultimate employee, Peterson, thus freeing the Mets to commence operating like a normal baseball operation with one conductor directing all the instruments, Omar.
The comparison of Mejia & Heilman cases is a comparison of opposites with Heilman as u make a case, there was a SP forced into a pen role unsuccessfully; however, I fear with Mejia u ultimately have a pen pitcher being shoehorned into a rotation. I fear the former, Heilman, was the easier case.
Mejia’s sole limited starting success came against raw draftees from usage of a pitch that naturally did unnatural things(unintended cutter) the simple fact that any pitcher is unaware of what they are applying to a pitch to produce a specific result clearly is a warning that changes in mechanics are likely to produce unwanted loss of such phenomenon and no method of resetablishing it(sorta like finding a treasure without a map by just wandering & stumbling upon it while wearing a blindfold the likelihood of repeating the result if starting over, is near impossible with or without the blindfold. There are too many alterations needed to transform Mejia into a MLB grade SP, delivery mechanics,velocity modification, to ensure whatever it is that he does to get “that” action will remain unaffected. If Manuel is GUUILTY of any infringement of Mejia’s development in my opinion, it was too much timidity in not using him in furnace hot situations enough whether ultimately that was his decision or Omar’s or Jeff’s makes little difference Mejia never had the “goods” to be a Craig Swan let alone a Doc Gooden. It takes more than velocity & movement to make a SP. Borrowing a little from your Heilman reference, Let’s portray the bullpen as a group of round holes, the rotation as a series of square holes. Heiman’s a square peg, Mejia’s a round one when placed properly & securely there’s nothing to surpass that fit. A sharp knife may whittle the corners of the square enough to be forced into the round hole; but no actions can forcfully fill the naked corners after hammering that round peg into the square opemming.
OK Mets62Fan – LOL @ the hot tub comment. I was not so much comparing Mejia to Heilman as I was comparing the treatment of Mets pitchers when they are “convinced” that a guy is a “reliever” or a “starter” suited to their own needs. I didn’t bring up Peterson, but again, I have a feeling that whole Heilman demoted-to-the-pen thing is more of a Peterson and Heilman clash than anything else, so that’s an excellent point.
i stop reading at aaron heilman…
Alex, I <3 you and so does #5 :p
coop
i was only kidding, that’s my way to say i can care less about heilman
Great fan you are, my friend!!!
Are you that egotisical that you even have to post that? Don’t read and move on…….
Great post Coop and by Janish as well. I always felt sorry for Heilman because he never really seemed happy with the role that the Mets handed him. A role that fluctuated from week to week it seemed. There was period where Heilman was one of the best relievers in the league, but then a few bad pitches erased those glory days and he became public enemy number one undeservedly so. In actuality, Heilman was mediocre and though he felt he had the repertoire to be a good starter, I don’t believe he did and obviously so did the Mets. Still he had plenty of good moments as a Met, more than bad ones.
In 2005-2007, Heilman was very good. He then started to slip and 2008 was mediocre. Indulge my judgmental moment, but in the years I mentioned, Heilman was a lot better pitcher than Mets fans recognized. Mets fans attitude toward Aaron was boorish at best.
I agree, the same could be said for Castillo.
Although I always thought Heilman should have gotten a second try as a starter, he’s been on two teams since the Mets and neither of them tried to make him a starter. I don’t know about A.J. Hinch, but I’m sure Lou Piniella knows more about baseball than I do, so my guess is that he’s just not that good.
I have been completely surprised at how the Mest have hndled Pelfrey. I fully expected them to botch this as well. With pitchers very rarley to you get instant success. Added to which indignity pitchers rarley perform better when their job is on the line. There is no reason that when you have a guy doing well in AAA the team should be so set at the #5 spot that a player cannot dispose of that pitcher. Meening when you have over payed guys rounding out the rotation it makes it hard to promote a rookie to a rotation spot. The tides seem to be turning though and I like what I see. Neise has been pretty much handed a role and Pelf is no longer worried about losing his job. A comfortable pitcher is a happy pitcher. If Misch or Gee start throwing like mad then Tak can go to the pen and these guys can get their chance. The Heilmann debacle was at least entertaining. I really lost confidence in AAron when he started throwing in the mid 90′s he seemed to have no control at those speeds but wouldn’t stop doing it.
[...] MetsMerized – A look back at how the Mets ruined Aaron Heilman. [...]