How do you coach the pitcher who has everything?
“Get out of the way, next question.”
He may have been joking, but Jeremy Hefner‘s approach to working with Jacob deGrom, the Mets’ two-time Cy Young Award winner, isn’t too far off.
“I just try to support him the best way I can, be there for him, and just kind of be with him,” Hefner said. “There’s not much I can say to him.”
It doesn’t take much observation of deGrom to commend Hefner’s strategy.
But what has worked so well to this point, the pairing between the entire Mets pitching staff and Hefner, is that he doesn’t really have a strategy yet.
“I think that’s the beautiful thing about where I’m at, in my context,” Hefner said on Wednesday. “I don’t have a super long track record as a coach — I’ve been a coach for a year-and-a-half now.”
In that time, which began in 2019 as the Minnesota Twins’ assistant, Hefner has established himself as one of the best of the new-age coaches that blends an innate feel for pitching with a second-nature understanding of the analytics that do and don’t matter.
But at its most fundamental level, Hefner understands that coaching means teaching, and teaching means conversation. He learned that over a professional playing career that spanned ten seasons, including two in the majors with the Mets.
“I’ve been a player a lot longer than I’ve been a coach, so for me it’s just dialogue,” he said.
Now that Hefner has seen the entire rotation (albeit one missing Noah Syndergaard and Marcus Stroman) at least one time through, the comfort level and excitement to be where he is has set in.
“It’s all positive for me,” he said. “We attacked the strike zone, we got some swings-and-misses, got them to put the ball in play weakly outside of a few cases. Overall I was very pleased with how our guys have thrown the ball.”
Hefner also offered some extended thoughts on a collection of the Mets starting and relief pitchers:
Dellin Betances
“There’s not too many pitchers in our league that are as big as he is, so from a visual standpoint the hitter just doesn’t see that very often. His ability to throw the breaking ball whenever he wants certainly helps him.
“I’m not concerned with the velocity [note: Betances is averaging 94 mph, down from 98 mph in his last full season]. As the season progresses and he gets more outings under his belt, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a continual increase in velocity back to where he was.
“This guy didn’t pitch for however long it was, 18 months or something. There’s going to be some progression back to where he was prior to his surgery.”
Jacob deGrom
“He’s consistent. His release point is consistent, his pitches are consistent. There are some little things here and there, from time to time [that I can help him with]. Maybe on a particular hitter or a sequence that he hasn’t tried ever in his career.
“Other than that it’s just being there for him, answering any questions he might have, and just kind of go from there.”
“He’s so in tune to his mechanics, he repeats it so well. He knows what he does well, how his pitches move, when to use them, when to deploy the changeup.
“Maybe he’s a perfectionist at times, so [I’m] encouraging him just to enjoy the ride a little bit more.”
“I think it’s just his focus when he’s working. When he’s in the bullpen, or before the game, or in the game, he’s really concentrated on what he’s trying to do out there. Maybe more so than anyone else I’ve ever been around. That’s probably what I’ve learned the most from him.”
Edwin Diaz
“Sugar possesses extremely good weapons, and he knows that. We’re confident in his ability to get the ball to his glove side and dominate hitters.”
“I think he’s pretty much there. Now it’s just a matter of getting him in game situations, ramping the intensity up, and maybe some adverse things happen to him and we see how he responds.
“He’s such an athletic guy, he can put his body into some different positions and there’s some deception there. So we’re just trying to maximize all of that, just like we do with everyone else.
“He possesses incredible weapons, so just trying to maximize those on a night-in night-out basis.”
Jeurys Familia
“We go to our food room up in the Delta Club and they have the team pictures from each year, and in the team picture where we played together we’re actually standing next to each other.
“Jeurys is such an incredible human being. He’s such a joy to be around, and then add on that he’s a good pitcher and has some really nasty stuff. It’s been really fun over the last six or seven months to get to know him better and rekindle that friendship we had a few years ago.”
“We’re all competitive. All of our guys are hyper-competitive and they want to go out and do really well. His first outing he went out and pounded the bottom of the zone and maybe overthrew a little bit, but those are things that happen to every pitcher throughout a season.
“His stuff is some of the best on our staff so we have all the confidence in the world in Fama that he can come in and get big outs for us.”
Steven Matz
“With Matzy, it’s just ‘how he thinks about his stuff’ and ‘how I think about his stuff’ and we go about trying to figure out the best way to get the hitter out and make him the most successful pitcher that we can.
“Like all of our guys, Matzy — he’s nasty. He’s got some really good stuff, so I’m anxious to see him again in a couple of days and continue to repeat what he did in his first start. The sky’s the limit for this guy.”
David Peterson
“I didn’t have much to do with Petey [his debut]. That was a win for the for the organization, for our player development system.
“Petey was unfazed and stayed on the aggressive the entire night. I was glad I was able to witness that. Such a special moment in this crazy time for him to make his debut and pitch so well. I was happy for him and for us.”
“Petey has really good stuff, so we’ll see how it plays out. It may be a game-to-game type situation or maybe inning-to-inning or batter-to-batter. I’m confident that Petey can make those adjustments if and when they need to happen.”
Rick Porcello
“[The slider] is a good pitch for him. Even though the results didn’t match, that’s a good pitch to the Braves lineup.
“Rick’s a ‘feel’ guy. He didn’t have the best feel the other night but I anticipate him in a couple days to go back out and get back to where he was even in his bullpen previous to that start.
Michael Wacha
“Wach kind of retooled his mechanics on his own a little bit. I think he started on this path even before he signed with us. His work ethic is off the charts and I’m incredibly happy for his first outing, what he was able to do, and all the work that he’s put in to see it come to fruition a little bit.
“We’ve just got to continue the rest of the season, but it was a good first start for him for sure.”
