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Mets Hire Carter Capps As Rookie League Pitching Coordinator

By Jacob Resnick

January 13, 2021 No comments

Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

Despite popular sentiments, it would be incorrect to assert that the Mets have been operating in the Stone Age when it comes to analytics and forward-thinking over the past decade.

In addition to hiring two executives who had been at the forefront of the sabermetric revolution, Sandy Alderson and Paul DePodesta, the organization was quick to install and utilize Trackman radar systems throughout its minor league system and, as of last year, had a research and development department with at least five full-time employees.

But baseball front offices in 2021 are operating at a lightning-quick pace, and if the Wilpons left the Mets with anything it was an analytics infrastructure that simply cannot compete with the likes of the Dodgers, Yankees, Rays, and others that employ over 20 full-time analysts. Simply put, if you aren’t properly supporting R&D, your competition is.

It isn’t just the tools and technology that need funding. Elite organizations are recruiting the brightest minds in the field, and nowhere is there a more impressive concentration of coaches and researchers than at Driveline, a data-driven training facility in Kent, Washington, that has revitalized major league careers and developed elite amateurs.

In recent years, Driveline employees have been hired to ply their trade with the pros, and not just as low-level interns. Founder Kyle Boddy currently runs the Reds’ organizational pitching program and brought Eric Jagers, now their major league assistant pitching coach, with him. The Phillies hired Caleb Cotham as their major league pitching coach and Jason Ochart as their minor league hitting coordinator.

In total, somewhere around half of the 30 major league organizations have hired former Driveline employees, and it isn’t a shock to anyone that the Mets were not among them — until now.

Former major league reliever Carter Capps, most recently a private trainer and pitching analyst at Driveline, tweeted Tuesday night that he’ll be joining the Mets as a minor league pitching coach and coordinator.

While the specifics of his role aren’t yet known (he’ll be based out of Port St. Lucie), Capps’ hire is a small indication that the new baseball operations leadership team of Alderson, Jared Porter, and Zack Scott — as assembled by Steve Cohen — is dedicated to exploring any avenue to gain a player development edge.

Capps flashed a short burst of brilliance in the majors, posting a 1.16 ERA with 58 strikeouts in 31.0 innings for the 2015 Marlins, but a rule change that neutralized his unorthodox delivery, Tommy John surgery, and thoracic outlet syndrome quickly derailed his career.

Capps retired after the 2018 season and pivoted to coaching. With Driveline, he increased his understanding and application of biomechanics and analytics.

He offered a glimpse of how he approaches the marriage of data and coaching on a recent Driveline podcast episode.

“I have to know that [the athletes] can handle that amount of information. What I do [with long-term clients] is slowly start conditioning them so that by the time they leave [Driveline] I’m expecting them to know all the nuances. But with these shorter-stay guys I know they’re already going to be overwhelmed when I do the biomechanics report.

“If a guy has great vertical break, good approach angle — ‘Hey, maybe think about throwing your fastball up in the zone a little more often,’ help that curveball tunnel a bit better so you don’t just have to get strikes on your 0-2 curveball in the dirt. A simple suggestion like that. I’m not going to tell him about vertical approach angle and pitch tunneling and stuff like that, it’s just ‘Hey, this would play better in this scenario, based off these two factors.’

“Then depending on his correspondence — ‘OK, that clearly hit home, he clearly understood that’ —we can go into level two pitch design-type stuff. Same thing with understanding biomechanics. It’s strictly based on what the athlete is giving back to me feedback-wise.”

A theme: communication. Understanding data is one thing, being able to translate it for untrained athletes is another. At just 30 years old, Capps is uniquely suited to bring cutting-edge topics to Mets minor leaguers — some of whom were active during his last season — without weighing them down with numbers.

Capps joins a department the features Jeremy Hefner and Jeremy Accardo, two former players that exhibit these same qualities, at the top. Ricky Meinhold was recently added to the major league staff and brings advanced knowledge of tech and data for someone who started out on the field. Analysts like Jared Faust and David Lang will be able to process the large amounts of collected data for dissemination throughout the organization.

It’s impossible to directly measure the effects of coaching on players, and the inner-workings of an organization are beyond what an outsider can surmise, but it’s encouraging to see the Mets take a step in hiring someone with a resumé that would open eyes in the most-respected baseball operations departments.

It’s a sign that Cohen’s regime, unlike the last, understands that any momentary lapse in trying to get ahead will leave you hopelessly behind.