SMOOTHER RIDE
Met reliever Smith looks to manage the ‘roller coaster’ of baseball better in ’24
For Drew Smith, the highs and lows of 2023 were extreme.
The Mets had turned to the right-hander in important innings in 2022. Last year, with Edwin Diaz down, they went to him in even more important spots. At times, he succeeded, and the adrenaline from his three saves and 12 holds left him wanting more. But there were also two blown saves and some home runs at inopportune times.
“That baseball,” Smith recently told the Daily News, “a roller coaster. It was tough, but I did get some good experience. I’m going to try to lean on the good experience more than the bad but you can take the bad and learn from it.”
Smith had to learn some lessons the hard way.
In his age-29 season, the righty went 4-6 with a 4.15 ERA. It wasn’t a terrible season. After missing the 2019 season to undergo Tommy John surgery and missing much of the second half of 2022 with a lat injury, managing a career-high 56 ⅓ innings was an accomplishment.
But he also gave up some costly home runs.
There was the blown save against the Milwaukee Brewers during the Mets’ June free-fall. Two of his three August homers resulted in losses.
His slider, according to pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, had gotten “big and slow.” This was the result of some mechanical changes made after two lat injuries. Smith has gone back to the old slider, which is much firmer than it was last season, throwing from an arm slot that is about three inches higher than it was last season.
The arm slot no longer concerns him. The Mets don’t think it was the culprit behind the lat injuries — that was an overextension on his delivery. The Dallas-area native is hoping that a hard slider down will play off of his elevated fastball and force hitters to second-guess where the ball is going. He also plans to utilize his curveball more often this season.
Heading into 2024, which could be his final year with the Mets, Smith has his old slider and his old fastball back, and a new way to handle the roller coaster of baseball.
“When I struggle, I kind of like shut myself off,” Smith said. “I internalize everything. It’s just how I do things and like maybe friends will call me and I won’t answer. I don’t respond, I don’t talk to my family as much. It sounds bad but I just wanted to deal with my struggles myself.”
By internalizing every bad outing, Smith realized he was ruminating too much. He wasn’t able to turn the page quickly enough for the next game. Buck Showalter recognized this and continued to use Smith, forcing him to turn the page and helping instill some confidence in him after bad outings. This let Smith know that the organization had not lost confidence in him either.
Still, he realized once the season was over that he needed to find a better way to handle failure. This year, he hopes to let people in to see his struggles.
“That’s an absolutely terrible way to do things,” Smith said. “So I think just honestly, if I have a rough one, I’m going to just talk about it. I’ll talk to my dad about it, talk to one of my best friends about it. I’ll put it out there and then get it out of the way and focus on the next one.”
Smith came to the Mets as a minor leaguer in the Lucas Duda trade midway through 2017. The Mets used that trade deadline to try to infuse their pitching pipeline with talent but none of the other pitchers — Jamie Callahan, Jacob Rhame, Ryder Ryan and A.J. Ramos — ever became what the Mets had hoped. Smith, who will be a free agent at the end of the season, is the only one that remains.
Even in a walk year, he doesn’t feel the same pressure he did last season. Diaz is back, something that eases the minds of the entire bullpen. The national spotlight is off the Mets, which might not be a bad thing.
Smith could be poised for his best season yet. Or he could be on his way out of Queens. It’s a big year for him and the right year for an improved outlook.
“It gets frustrating, it really does,” he said. “One thing I really want to focus on this year is not riding the wave as much. If you have a bad one, just flush it and focus on the next day because you’re not going to change anything that just happened.”