Ex-Mets reliever a new pitcher with Mariners
NEW YORK — Seventeen months after he was cut loose by the Mets, Paul Sewald’s life has changed in a bunch of big ways — all for the better.
He and his wife, Molly, became parents to their daughter, Chloe, late last season. He has emerged as an excellent late-inning reliever for a Mariners team that nearly made the playoffs in 2021 and expects to compete for a spot again in 2022. And he doesn’t have to think much these days about his professional Plan B, which a little over a year ago was increasingly on the mental front-burner in case stuff didn’t go well after he signed a minor-league deal with Seattle.
But it did go well — incredibly, successfully, improbably well. Building a baseball facility in his native Las Vegas, a burgeoning baseball hotbed, can wait.
“We have enough baseball players in town that I think we could really make that work,” he said Saturday afternoon in the visitors’ dugout at Citi Field. “We’ve talked about that for years, and always thought post-baseball that’s what I would do. But we’re going to put that off obviously for a little bit.”
Sewald came back to Queens this weekend as his new self and provided his old club a glimpse of what they missed out on — and gave up on. And it felt damn good.
After he retired all four of his batters Friday night, helping the Mariners to a 2-1 win, Sewald had a 3.11 ERA in 72 games with his new team.
With his old team, for reference, he had a 5.50 ERA in 125 games.
“It was more fun to get booed as a visiting player than a home player here. So that was good,” he said of his return. “It was emotional. Obviously when we got the schedule last year, I knew we were coming here, so I’ve been obviously waiting to come back.”
The Mets never anticipated Sewald blossoming into a high-leverage bullpen arm — the kind of player they could use another one of right now, actually — when they chose not to tender him a contract following the 2020 season, making Sewald a free agent.