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PORT ST. LUCIE — If he was not fully back to the Adam Ottavino of 2019, the Adam Ottavino of 2021 still gave hope that the pitcher the Mets have added to their bullpen for 2022 can be an important weapon.
Though his 4.21 ERA in 69 games with the Red Sox last season still included some bumps along the way, Ottavino was encouraged by his time in Boston and believes he can build off it this season in Queens.
“I thought I got a lot better last year actually,” said Ottavino, who signed a one-year, $4 million deal with the Mets earlier this month. “It was a good developmental year for me. Incorporated more four-seam, more changeup. I’m definitely trying to bring that over into this year.
“It’s basically, I’m always going to throw a lot of sliders, but what to do with the other 50-some-odd percent of my pitches is always kind of shifting. I feel like I’ve made some good strides into a new shift now.”
During his best years with the Rockies and Yankees, Ottavino was almost entirely a slider-sinker pitcher. Though his wipeout slider usage remained the same in 2021 (46.4 percent), he threw less sinkers and instead added more four-seam fastballs — 237 of them, compared to the combined 40 he threw from 2018-20 — which proved to be his most effective pitch, according to Baseball Savant’s Run Value (an advanced stat that measures run prevention by pitch type).
Opposing batters hit just .106 with a .170 slugging percentage against his four-seam fastball, a pitch that manager Buck Showalter took notice of in Ottavino’s Grapefruit League debut on Tuesday.
“I’ve always been a fan of his from afar,” Showalter said. “This guy’s got over 10 years in the big leagues, he’s got some moxie.”
Ottavino had a 2.54 ERA through his first 42 appearances with the Red Sox, though he tailed off toward the end of last season, posting a 7.04 ERA over his final 27 games. Still, his hard-hit percentage ranked in the 95th percentile among all MLB pitchers, according to Baseball Savant, meaning he induced plenty of weak contact.
Now, the Brooklyn native is trying to get back to basics in his return to New York.
“For me, it’s just fundamentals this year,” Ottavino said. “I want to be controlling the count better. … If I can get my first-pitch strikes where they need to be, then that’s going to take care of a lot of things.”
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