The Mets' Paul Sewald lesson isn't what you think
The Diamondbacks' Paul Sewald pitches during the ninth inning of a game against the Mets on Monday at Citi Field. Credit: AP/Frank Franklin II
Paul Sewald, ex-Met, the guy who set a major-league record by pitching in 118 games before picking up his first win, a righthander who never figured it out in Queens, is right where every baseball player wants to be: in the middle of a playoff race.
He is the closer for the Diamondbacks, a headliner of a trade-deadline acquisition from the Mariners, and owns a 3.16 ERA with 33 saves, tied for seventh-most in the majors. If Arizona ends up with an NL wild-card spot, Sewald — added to help stabilize what had been a volatile and closer-less bullpen — figures to be a significant reason why.
You might think you know what comes next here. It should be a roasting of the Mets for letting another One Who Got Away get away, for not knowing how to get the most out of their own players, for being so inept or so enamored with others’ players that they don’t understand what is right in front of them.
Wrong. Maybe the above is true, but their real Paul Sewald lesson is different — and crucial to incoming president of baseball operations David Stearns’ overarching goal of building a perennial playoff team. The Mets need to be much better at turning fringe players into impact players.
What is the saying about one team’s trash? It is another team’s shutdown relievers?
If the Mets want to be the East Coast Dodgers, successful reclamation projects are a noteworthy piece of that, somewhere on the list below having a payroll around $300 million. The sport is littered with examples of the best, smartest, most successful organizations finding gems in the scrap heap.
The actual Dodgers do this regularly, including with their current closer, Evan Phillips, a waiver claim from the Rays, of all teams. The Yankees got Clay Holmes, then a 28-year-old with a career 5.57 ERA, in a minor deal with the Pirates. And the Mariners were comfortable parting with Sewald because their bullpen is loaded with guys picked up as minor pieces in trades (Andres Munoz and Matt Brash) or claimed off waivers (Tayler Saucedo from the Mets and Gabe Speier).
Heck, Stearns’ soon-to-be-former club, the Brewers, is awfully good at this, too. Their bullpen this year, during which Stearns has served in an advisor capacity instead of running the show, features Hoby Milner, a one-time minor-league signing, plus Joel Payamps, Bryse Wilson and Elvis Peguero, acquired in minor deals or as lesser pieces in trades.
If you don’t recognize those names, that’s OK. That is part of the point. Every good team has pleasant surprises, and oftentimes those pleasant surprises — the Sewalds — were failures on their former teams and projects on their new ones.
The Mets have tried. They thought Adonis Medina might be something, and for a hot second there it looked like he might be. Jake Reed was another. And Jacob Barnes. This year the crop includes Trevor Gott, Phil Bickford and Jeff Brigham.
The list goes on. But they haven’t had any substantial wins in recent years. Their beefed-up analytics department — an area in which they’ve been trying to catch up under owner Steve Cohen — and newly opened pitching lab in Port St. Lucie, Florida, are reasons to believe that can change.
“It’s finding people,” Sewald said. “There’s not a magic strategy to this.”
By “people” he means analytics gurus and pitching coaches who can read data and translate it for those on the field. Every team tries to do this; few are excellent at it.
For Sewald in Seattle, it was Joel Firman, an economics-major-turned-analytics-director. At the beginning of 2021, Sewald’s first year with the Mariners after the Mets cut him, they told him to throw his fastball up in the zone, turn his slider into more of a sweeping breaking ball and dump his changeup. He had a 5.50 ERA before that, 2.96 since.
So take it from Sewald. Once a team transforms a couple of retreads into contributors, it gets easier to do it again. Sewalds beget Sewalds.
“A non-quantifiable thing is we developed a culture in Seattle that you get better in Seattle,” Sewald said. “I don’t know if it’s fake. I don’t know if it’s a placebo effect. When somebody who is well below average in New York for four years comes over and turns into one of the best relievers in baseball, the next couple people kind of notice.
“They come over and are like, 'what did you do to Paul?' Their conversations are eager instead of defeated . . . The only way to get that is to be successful in changing people.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
