The Seaver statue stands outside the stadium as a reminder of who and what the Mets were and have forever since tried to be.
Generation K, anyone? Bill Pulsipher, Paul Wilson and Jason Isringhausen was a dream that never became a reality. Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz. Oh well.
But now … 10 games into the season … the Mets, rained out of Monday night’s game against the Giants, are making an eye-opening pitch for history with the best start (1.07 ERA, 0.75 WHIP) of any rotation in the last 109 years. In other words, long before Casey Stengel’s Roger Craig-Al Jackson-Jay Hook-Bob Miller 1962 rotation … and long after the Dwight Gooden-Ron Darling-Sid Fernandez-Bob Ojeda 1986 champion rotation.
And the Unsung Hero for Buck Showalter — the Sung Hero of the 2022 Mets — is pitching coach Jeremy Hefner.
“Imagine if Jacob deGrom was part of the rotation,” you hear these days from Mets fans.
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When his pitchers gush about him, you hear the words relatable and knowledgeable over and over.
“I think the biggest gift for a pitching coach,” Chris Bassitt told The Post, “is basically not having everyone try to be the same, really just understanding the person, what it takes for that person to be the best of them. And he’s genuinely put in the time for I would say all of us just to know what each person takes to be good. And we’re all different. It’s not an easy job, but he’s doing a damn good job of doing it.”
Showalter is adept at recognizing and understanding what makes each player tick. Hefner is adept at recognizing and understanding what makes each pitcher tick.
“I think his knowledge of his guys is No. 1,” David Peterson told The Post. “He knows every guy, their stuff, how they like to use it, their approach. He’s very personable with every guy and every type of pitcher we have. And then just his knowledge of the game, knowledge of technology, and knowledge of feel as a former major league pitcher. For guys that are super-analytical he can convey what they need for guys who aren’t as analytical, he can convey to them what the analytics are saying.”
“He’s a sounding board for every guy in this room. He’s a pleasure to work with every day.”
The Mets’ overall ERA is 2.35. Relievers Chasen Shreve and Trevor May were attracted to the Mets in large part because of Hefner, who was inherited by Showalter.
“I know a lot of the guys love him. He’s very approachable, he’s very knowledgeable for one thing. I think me and him see eye-to-eye on a lot of things,” Shreve said. “Last year with the Pirates, I wanted to throw my fastball down and they didn’t think it was a great idea. And I brought it here, and he was like, ‘I think that’s a great idea.’ We just think the same way. Especially with how experienced our staff is, he knows when you talk, when to not talk, just all that.”
May said, “He’s really, really good at kinda taking feedback and it’s a two-way conversation with him, and it’s not always like that. That goes a long way I think with guys figuring out who they are and you have a lot of space to do it here. When you get young guys that kinda get that rapport right away, you can get a comfort level. He’s one of the best pitching minds in baseball in my opinion.”
“He’s got a really good understanding of kind of the advance analytics side of things. Understanding not only the intangible parts but what makes pitchers good and your ability to handle pressure and kinda stay cool and things like that, but also like what the best version of yourself looks like both from an eye standpoint and from a statistical standpoint. So if you have one really good pitch or you have something that has a lot of potential but you’re not really confident in it, he’s really good at identifying those things and making you believe in them as well. A lot of times you don’t know if somebody’s good or not until you throw it a bunch, and I think guys are more willing to do that here. He’s really good at like presenting the information that this will work if you just do it … getting you everything you need and then identifying what a guy actually likes to know and what the guy doesn’t need, and being able to tailor things for them very quickly is his superpower for sure.”
Hefner turned 36 last month.
“I think one of the most underrated values to him is just his age,” Bassitt said. “We’re all similar in age for the most part — for being a big league pitching coach, he’s young, but he’s also very, very talented. He has young family, we all have young families, so everything that we’re going through, he kinda is able to know that, he’s living through it.
“The biggest thing for me is just relatability.
“I would say a very big negative to older pitching coaches is the fact that you have people trying to put in analytics, and they’ve been a different way for so long, but Hef’s so good at kinda the new world of baseball and just being really, really good at that.”
Hefner was 8-15 with a 4.59 ERA in 2012-13 in 50 games with the Mets before a second Tommy John surgery led to his retirement.
“He’s got a lot of pitching knowledge, he’s been in the big leagues, he’s pitched at this level,” Seth Lugo said, “and he kinda knows what we go through on a day-to-day basis and throughout the whole season. But what separates him is his openness to talk about different ideas, or different things we need. He’s an easy guy to talk to. That’s really important at this level.”
This is Hefner’s third year as Mets pitching coach.
“What he’s brought in the past few years, it’s not like a strict analytic approach or strict old-school, it’s kind of a mix of both,” Lugo said.
Hefner was non-tendered and rehabbing a first Tommy John surgery when Lugo played with him in 2014.
“He doesn’t necessarily feel like a coach kind of, he feels like a teammate, just talking with him … he’s got respect from us as a coach, obviously,” Lugo said.
Lugo was asked what he remembers about his pitching coach as a teammate.
“So he was rehabbing in St. Lucie and I was pitching after him a lot of times … but I remember he’s pretty good at cards,” Lugo said.
The Mets and Giants will play a doubleheader on Tuesday, and long-suffering Mets fans know from first-hand experience that it’s waaay too premature to look at Hefner and see former pitching coaches Rube Walker (1969) and Mel Stottlemyre (1986).
“I’m hoping the last 10 games of the year are the historic thing that we’re talking about,” Bassitt said, “not the first 10. It’s great to get off to a great start, but the finish is always way more important than the start.”
The Seaver statue will be watching.