PIED PIPER OF PITCHING
Ottavino has become player-coach willing to spread his gospel to all
PORT ST. LUCIE — Following the 2017 season, Adam Ottavino made a pilgrimage, now familiar for pitchers, to Driveline Baseball in Kent, Wash. But rather than the standard reason for such a journey — to use the company’s technology to refine his stuff — Ottavino went to learn about the technology itself.
He wanted to accumulate the knowledge of how the high-speed cameras are positioned and used and analyzed so that he and his father could set up a similar pitching lab in a space in Harlem he rents from his father-in-law.
That is how Ottavino’s baseball brain works. When it comes to pitching, his hunger to learn is voracious. He calls it “a compulsion.” And he found the best way to learn is to teach himself. Which is fascinating because by gaining all the knowledge in isolation, Ottavino has become a Pied Piper of pitching (say that six times fast). He is an untitled pitching coach who is still one of the better relievers going.
Ottavino spreads his gospel a couple of times a week to amateurs, independent leaguers, minor leaguers and major leaguers who flock to his facility on St. Nicholas Avenue, between 124th and 125th Streets. Pitchers have been coming since 2018 (albeit interrupted by COVID-19) to eat tacos, listen to music and — oh, yeah — refine their craft with all the tech that Ottavino has mastered and the knowledge he has gained.
It is not an uncommon sight to see Ottavino in the Mets clubhouse these days serving as a guru of sorts, his reputation established. To see, for example, two pitchers trying to gain a major league foothold, such as
Jeff Brigham and lefty prospect Josh Walker watching raptly for 10 minutes as Ottavino demonstrates hand grips, spin possibilities and the thought process around the pitch that has most elevated his career, the slider.
Yankees reliever Michael King, who has worked at Ottavino’s facility during offseasons, said he learned so much from Ottavino about when to throw which pitch and why that there will be times when, “I’ll be on the mound and I’ll remember, ‘I just threw those two pitches and Otto told me to do this.’ So it’s like the Adam Ottavino sequence.”
Walker described Ottavino as a pitching “shepherd,” adding: “I’ve been trying to develop a slider. I’ve been messing with grips to get certain movement. Well, what better resource is there going to be than a guy who does it at the top of the game? So we are picking his brain and he’s generous enough to have a lengthy conversation to tell us what he knows, his thought process, the shapes of the pitch and then — importantly — what he’s thinking on the mound and how to use it.”
Ottavino says the questions he receives are mainly about three items:
1. How to stay healthy. Only lefty specialist, Andrew Chafin, has pitched in more games since 2017 (375) than Ottavino (370), while Ottavino has thrown 54 ¹/₃ more innings than Chafin. So, for example, when a career minor league starter such as Nestor Cortes joined the Yankees’ bullpen in 2018, it was Ottavino who tutored the lefty on how often to throw and how many pitches.
2. The slider. How to hold it and shape it and spin it and get the wide sweep for which Ottavino is known.
3. Sequencing. Ottavino watches so much baseball and pays attention with such detail that he has gained expertise in, among other things, reading swings. He prides himself that nearly one-third of the strikeouts (31.2 percent; 117 of 375) he has since he opened his facility in Harlem in 2018 have been looking. That’s because freezing hitters is often about using a pitch or location for which the hitter is not prepared.
Ottavino has been on a lifelong journey toward this. His father is an actor, his mother and grandmother are artists. Growing up in Brooklyn, he gravitated to pitchers for his beloved Yankees who had flair and artistry, notably David Cone and Orlando Hernandez. He uses the verb “sculpted” a lot to describe not just pitch shapes, but also how he arranges thoughts.
He always thirsted for knowledge, but it was hard to find in the minors and early in his career. It was mainly a lonely endeavor that he tackled with relish. Then, early in the 2015 season while with the Rockies, Ottavino had Tommy John surgery early in the season.
“That is when I started looking more outward rather than inward, trying to help others because I couldn’t help myself,” he said. “I was really taking a closer look at other guys and the way they were pitching and just seeing if I could help guys so I could help the team that way. Then when I came back, I hopped right back into the bullpen and those conversations just sort of continued. I was looking at the game a little differently. I wasn’t so inward anymore.”
At 37 now, coming off one of his best seasons and after re-signing with the Mets, Ottavino said he wants to pitch as long as possible. But with a third child due in May, he does not foresee jumping from playing to actual coaching. Instead, he imagines keeping the Harlem facility open, “But never as a business.” No, Ottavino has gained wisdom about the art of pitching and he loves baseball and he loves paying it forward as Matt Belisle and Rafael Betancourt once did for him in the Colorado bullpen. So this is not business for Ottavino. It is pleasure.
“Behind closed doors, I’ll share it all with guys and see if something resonates,” Ottavino said. “Because when I was a younger player, you’re just looking for that one piece of knowledge from an older guy that sets you on the right path. You know that thing that clicks for you and really makes things better.”