Former Mets reliever Paul Sewald is a whole new pitcher with Mariners
Paul Sewald #37 of the Seattle Mariners comes in the game to pitch in the seventh inning against the Mets at Citi Field on May 13, 2022. Credit: Getty Images
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 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 darn 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 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 after the 2020 season, making Sewald a free agent.
He had bounced between the majors and minors for most of four seasons, usually not pitching particularly well. But Sewald was not yet eligible for arbitration, which meant he still was inexpensive, and teams rarely non-tender so-called pre-arb players — so much so that Sewald didn’t even know it was possible until he got the December 2020 call that it had happened to him.
By January 2021, he had a minor-league deal with the Mariners. During spring training that year, the analytics department and pitching coaches presented him a series of suggestions on how to become a better pitcher. That started the transformation.
Sewald started throwing a “rising fastball” at the top of the strike zone, he said, instead of trying to pick off the lower corners. He changed the shape of his slider. He stopped throwing his changeup altogether. And the Mariners used him in close games instead of blowouts, which he said made a huge difference.
“Those are two completely different pitches than they were when I was here,” he said, adding later that much of that advice was the “opposite” of what former Mets pitching coach Dave Eiland (2018-19) wanted him to do.
Had the Mets invested more heavily in analytics, which happened in earnest around the time they let him go, Sewald said his fate might have been different.
“Sandy [Alderson] is the godfather of it,” he said. “He was the first one [with the Athletics in the 1980s and ’90s], but then he got passed up by people a little bit while he was here. Now he’s making more of an impact and I think it’s going to help their organization a lot.”
Sewald said he appreciates his time with the Mets — but he’ll still enjoy beating them.
“The Mets’ organization gave me a lot of opportunities. They drafted me, got me called up,” he said. “I have a lot of fond memories here. There were some that weren’t as fond, but overall I enjoyed my time here and I’m incredibly thankful of the Mets’ organization for everything they gave me. It felt really cool to come back to where I got called up.”
PAUL NEW MAN
Former Met Paul Sewald has had a transformation with Mariners.
A look at his numbers in Seattle compared to the Mets.
MARINERS: 72 Games, 12-4 Record, 12 Saves, 3.11 ERA, 75.1 Innings, 46 Hits, 26 Earned Runs
METS: 125 Games, 1-14 Record, 3 Saves, 5.50 ERA, 147.1 Innings, 150 Hits, 90 Earned Runs
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
