Zach Greene believes his 'conviction fastball' will help him make Mets

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — These are the biggest weeks of Zach Greene’s professional life, a heretofore inaccessible opportunity to reach the majors, granted to him by the Mets’ curiosity and an unusual set of rules governing his place on the roster. Now it is up to him to prove he should stay there, that he deserves to make the team over the other, say, dozen relievers competing during spring training for probably two spots in the bullpen.

The Mets selected Greene, a 26-year-old righthander, from the Yankees during the Rule 5 draft in December. He needs to stay on the active roster (or injured list) all season. Otherwise they risk losing him to another team. They cannot stash him in the minors.

Greene feels he is ready, largely because of his key pitch: a funky fastball.

“It’s a little something weird,” he said. “I just call it the conviction fastball.”

Greene means that in a self-belief, manifesting, believe-it-to-see-it sort of way. His fastball usually is 92-94 mph, he said, but if he truly, genuinely believes at the moment he throws it that it is going to be effective, it will be.

“You throw it with the max conviction possible,” he said, “then I think it can add an extra element to it.”

But it’s not just psychology. No amount of confidence will make up for what is, by modern standards, decidedly middling velocity. Physics is important, too, and Greene has that going for him.

Because of gravity and release angles, fastballs drop on their way to the plate. Greene’s fastball comes out of his hand in such a way that it spins faster than a normal fastball, which helps it drop less than would otherwise be expected.

That gives the appearance of it rising or coming at the hitter faster — maybe just 0.5-2 perceived mph faster, pitching coach Jeremy Hefner said, but that is enough to matter.

“It jumps on you,” said Mark Vientos, who went 0-for-3 against Greene in Triple-A last year.

Hefner said: “Everything is timing for the hitters. They’re on deck or they’re in the dugout, they’re timing release to the glove. They have that natural (process) how they get ready for an at-bat. And then they get in there and it’s 92 (mph), so they’re thinking in their mind, they’re calibrating to 92. But then it feels harder or heavier or however they want to describe it. That’s that extra gear. It gets by guys’ bats sometimes.”

Greene said his delivery — which includes getting low, legs set apart wide, leading to his releasing the ball at a lower height — also helps.

“There’s something with his delivery,” Hefner said. “I can’t quite put my finger on it. It makes him unique. Because it’s not a big body (6-1, 215 pounds). It’s not max effort. It’s low velo. But there’s a lot of things that are unique about him . . . I’m trying to wrap my head around what makes him so special and then making sure he doesn’t lose that.”

Greene estimated he threw fastballs 70% of the time in 2022, which he spent with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, the Yankees’ Triple-A club. Usage that frequently would have put him in the top 10 among major-league relievers who threw at least 50 innings. He expects “more of the same,” he said, with the Mets.

Along the way last season, he struck out 96 batters in 68 1/3 innings. He did that across 48 appearances, showing the kind of multi-inning ability that the Mets value. He had a 3.42 ERA and 1.22 WHIP.

“You look around the bullpen and bullpens across the league, and you got a lot of guys who are throwing 98, 99,” Greene said. “So me coming in, maybe not being the higher-velocity guy, does give a different look. Even though it might be 92, it doesn’t exactly play down to 92. It plays up.”

Greene realized his fastball was different in 2018, his junior year (and first year) at the University of South Alabama. The coaching staff kept calling for it, so he kept throwing it.

“At some point, I was like, OK, I can throw this every time,” he said.

That isn’t literally true — also has a slider that is “better than I get credit for,” he said, and a split-changeup that “is a weapon” — unless, well, maybe if he says it with conviction.

Greene has a running joke with another Mets reliever, Stephen Ridings, his friend and fellow ex-Yankees farmhand, about their respective velocities. Ridings can reach triple-digits. Greene can’t.

“I’ve always messed with him that he might throw 100, but my conviction adds 10 miles an hour,” Greene said. “So I actually throw harder than him.”

By Tim Healey

timothy.healey@newsday.com@timbhealey

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.