I believe it was The Athletics‘ Eno Sarris who borrowed the phrase ‘A Brave New World’, referring to the rapidly changing and modernized terrain of Player Development (PD). I believe it was also Princess Jasmine and Prince Aladdin who coined the phrase ‘A Whole New World’, which might even more aptly characterize modern PD modalities as it pertains to the Mets organization.

But Sandy Alderson absolutely meant business when he spoke about the need for the Mets to improve the Player Development system throughout their minor leagues. After immediately dismissing the previous farm director, Jared Banner, Alderson has methodically and significantly augmented and modernized the Mets minor league development and coaching team from the top down.

Starting from the top, replacing Banner is new executive director of player development, Kevin Howard. Howard is a former major league journeyman who retired as a player in 2012, and had spent the last five years as the hitting coordinator for Cleveland. Cleveland is widely considered one of the more progressive and highly regarded clubs when it comes to player development. As you’ll see, this is a consistent and encouraging motif throughout the new regime’s hires.

While holdover pitching coordinator, Ricky Meinhold will also work with the major league staff in addition to his minor league oversight, Howard and the Mets now have a brand new hitting director, hiring Hugh Quattlebaum away from the same post that he held with the Seattle Mariners for the past three years. The Mariners have shot to the forefront of embracing modern player development modalities, such as ones researched and espoused at baseball data labs like Driveline.

Quattlebaum also has on his resume the association that he was the Mariners’ hitting coordinator when the organization successfully tweaked Jarred Kelenic‘s swing a couple of seasons ago, abetting the extent of his offensive breakout…Let’s not dwell on that little fact any further shall we?

But back to cutting edge research labs like Driveline Baseball, the Mets went right to the source for the first time this winter, hiring Driveline-trained and formerly employees Carter Capps as Rookie League pitching coordinator and Collin Hetzler as complex hitting coordinator. While the Van Wagenen/Wilpon regime was so eager to media leak that they had futile interest in retaining the services of Kyle Boddy (Driveline founder) last offseason, Alderson, with the backing of new owner Steve Cohen, has quietly gotten the job done.

Capps, the former Marlins and Padres pitcher who had a high-octane fastball and a renowned, but now-illegal delivery that catapulted himself off the mound towards home, will take the training he received at Driveline to help optimize the Mets youngest arms. In today’s pitching PD landscape, the name of the game is using Rapsodo/Trackman obtained pitch data to show pitchers how their pitches move, and how to get them to either move more, or in a more ideal way.

In a recent piece by the New York Post’s Ken Davidoff, it was revealed that Capps will be creating a pitching “academy” of sorts at the Mets’ Port St. Lucie minor league complex, mimicking what the Mets are doing down at their complex in the Dominican Republic. The goal is to create a continuum of instruction for the Mets young pitchers arriving in the United States from the Dominican, with a focus on using data and technology to grow and mold their arsenals. Bringing in a coach with Capp’s resume to accomplish this, is the exact thing you want for reasons discussed in further depth here.

Hetzler, whose role will essentially be Capps’ hitting counterpart, is also ideally equipped to navigate and thrive in today’s modern hitting PD arena. While spending the last two years as hitting operations manager at Driveline, Hetzler has been at the forefront of using new innovations and technology as a way to collect and implement data pertaining to training and optimizing hitting results. The degree to which technology has emerged onto the hitting development landscape is startling, and quickly catching up with it’s pitching counterpart.

Hetzler’s experience with modern tech and modalities such as Hitrax/Trackman/Rapsodo batted ball data, Edgertronic cameras, K-Motion sensors etc. is exactly what Sandy Alderson was referring to when he speaks of modernizing the Mets PD infrastructure. It’s impossible to underestimate the value Hetzler’s knowledge and experience brings to the Mets organization. As another prime example, Hetzler wrote here about using a new series of trainers called Axe Bats in a team setting, as a growingly popular modality for increasing bat speed in young hitters.

Beyond the Capps and Hetzler hires directly out of Driveline fame, the Mets have stayed busy, continually adding talent from some of the best Major League ball clubs as well. Kedeem Octave recently announced he will be joining the Mets Player Development department. Octave most recently has a background in video and data analysis for the Minnesota Twins, who, again, are amongst most highly-regarded organizations in the player development domain.

The Mets have also hired former Seattle Mariners’ director of pitching development (2018-2020), Brian DeLunas to be player development special projects coordinator. The Mariners have become known in recent years to be among the most progressive teams in adopting emerging pitching philosophies, and Delunas boasts an impressive resume, with particular emphasis in pitching biomechanics.

As an interesting and perhaps relevant side-note, Mets closer Edwin Diaz credits DeLunas for helping him keep his mechanics in order during his emergent 2018 season with Seattle. DeLunas’ priority however, will be to work closely with Ricky Meinhold and Kevin Howard on truly bringing the Mets minor league pitching program all the way into the new decade.

Alderson and GM Zack Scott have spent the last couple of months building a truly progressive PD infrastructure, in scope and in size. While not necessarily finished adding, Jeremy Barnes is already the seventh hire for the player development side this offseason, coming over from his post as hitting coordinator for the Houston Astros. There is no doubt that Barnes has great experience, coming from probably the preeminent major league club as it pertains to adopting the most modern player development techniques. He will serve with the Mets as director of player development initiatives.

The overhaul outlined above can be boiled down to a statement Steve Cohen made when he was in the process of finalizing his purchase of the Mets. Cohen claimed that wants the Mets to become the “East Coast Dodgers”, referring to their model success in both analytics and player development. One very direct way of doing that would be to hire the person who was running the Dodgers’ research and development (R&D) department for the last few years. Well, that’s exactly what Cohen did, hiring Ben Zauzmer as the Mets new director of baseball analytics.

Make no mistake about it. This is more than bluster and noise – for a change – folks. The proof is in the resume for all of these outstanding students of the game. With the guiding hand of his new front office, Steve Cohen is already putting his money where his mouth is.