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MMO Exclusive: Josh Hejka, Mets Minor League Sidearm Extraordinaire

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Josh Hejka (Liz Flynn/Brooklyn Cyclones)

Josh Hejka is not your typical relief prospect. The sidearmer went undrafted out of Johns Hopkins University despite being named to the 2019 College World Series All-Tournament Team.

In the College World Series, Hejka tossed a 152-pitch gem in which he allowed only one earned run in 9.2 innings. He would pitched an inning just two days later as well.

The right-hander then played in the United Shore Professional Baseball League for the Westside Woolly Mammoths, a league that had four teams that all used the same stadium. It was during a game for the Mammoths that Hejka found out he had been signed by the Mets.

Hejka started his professional career with the rookie level Kingsport Mets in June of 2019. He pitched 8.1 innings of scoreless ball with 10 strikeouts and three saves before being promoted to the Brooklyn Cyclones of the New York-Penn League.

In the middle of a playoff run, Hejka allowed three runs in 12 innings (2.25 ERA) and struck out 14 for the Cyclones. He tossed a scoreless inning with three strikeouts in Game 2 of the Cyclones championship round. Brooklyn beat the Spinners in three games to become the New York-Penn League champions.

Just as minor leaguers were ramping up in spring camp this year, Covid-19 hit, and the season was wiped out.

I recently had the chance to chat with Mets resident sidearm reliever Josh Hejka about his pitching style, how former Mets pitcher Chad Bradford helped him, how he uses analytics to his advantage, and what he did during a lost season.

MMO – Obviously you’re pitching style is unique, how and when did that come about?

Josh Hejka – Growing up, I always had the mindset and demeanor to be a pitcher. I loved being the one dictating the pace and controlling action. I pitched overhand when I was younger, but I remember one time when I was 9-years-old where I mixed in a submarine curveball on an 0-2 count. I ended up plunking the batter and my dad, the coach, scolded me a bit. We laugh about that moment now looking back.

Once I got to high school, I mostly played second base for our team at Divine Child. I still loved pitching, but I was undersized and underdeveloped, and was stuck behind three Div. I/II pitchers in the rotation. After my sophomore year, I went up to my coach, Tony DeMare, and told him that I wanted to do everything I could to get on the mound. He gave it to me straight up and told me that he though my best bet to pitch meaningful innings would be to lower my arm slot. My coaches worked with me throughout the fall and winter and I started the season as the No. 4 starter.

My history as a middle infielder meant that I was used to throwing from different arm slots and body positions, but the transition wasn’t instant. In my first two appearances, I walked more guys than I got out. I remember my dad asking me after the game “Do you think it’s time you go back to pitching overhand?” and I remember telling him “No, I’m close. It’s about to click.” My next start I shut out the best team in the state, and ended up being an All-State pitcher that season.

MMO – Now, there are clear obstacles to making it to the big leagues as a sidearmer in this era of heightened awareness of velocity. How have you used analytics to help bridge that gap?

Hejka – I’m going to disagree with the premise a bit. While obviously the average velocity in the MLB has increased significantly over the past couple decades, I think the larger role that analytics plays in the game allows organizations to quantify the advantage of throwing from a unique arm slot with unique movement profiles. The approach of the Rays this postseason is a great example of that, as they constantly mixed and matched different arm slots, including multiple sidearmers, to change the looks that hitters were getting.

Now with that being said, velocity is a crucial aspect of pitching. Especially as a reliever, not having above-average velocity means that the other aspects of my game have to be elite to make up for that. The ones I think about specifically are command, movement and deception.

Command has always been one of my strengths. In my senior season at Johns Hopkins, I walked eight batters in 77.1 innings. With Kingsport and Brooklyn in 2019, I walked five batters non-intentionally in 21.1 innings. One thing I’ve been reading about recently is how repeatable mechanics may not mean better command, as conventional knowledge would tell us. In fact, varying arm slots, body positions, and throwing inputs (such as the weight or size of a ball) produce a more robust neural model that leads to accurate throws in a wider range of initial conditions.

Reflecting back on my baseball career up until this point, I think my history as a middle infielder in high school as well as my history of long tossing have both contributed to my ability to command the ball, even though I’m releasing the ball from a body position and arm slot that is different than my long toss slot. Pitching Ninja posted an awesome video of Marcus Stroman warming up a while back, and Stroman was varying his throws (like a shortstop, like a quarterback, from one knee, etc). He was being an athlete and developing feel. I’ve begun incorporating some of that into my own warmups and it’s been awesome.

In terms of movement, throwing from a unique arm slot will naturally lend itself to movement profiles that are unique as well. Deception also naturally occurs due to the fact that the batter is not picking up the ball from a location that he is used to seeing. I feel like I really took the next step once I realized that I could continue developing these strengths of mine instead of just relying on them. When my college team got a Rapsodo my junior year of college, it was the best day of my life. The instant feedback of knowing exactly how my pitches were spinning and moving was invaluable. I had a similar feeling the first time I used an Edgertronic.

Ricky Meinhold and I have had a few conversations about where we want my arsenal to end up. I currently throw my fastball at about a 3:00 axis, 2300 spin, and 90 percent efficiency, which generates around 17-18 inches of arm-side horizontal break. My slider is currently around a 9:30 axis with 2800 spin and 60 percent efficiency, generating around 15-16 inches of glove-side horizontal break with a small amount of positive vertical break.

The ultimate goal is to bump the efficiency on those pitches, using tools such as Rapsodo and Edgertronic, so I can generate around 20 inches of break in either direction. I also want to decrease the spin axis on the slider to around 9:00, converting more of the spin into horizontal break rather than vertical. This will allow me to tunnel the fastball and slider extremely effectively, with both pitches seemingly starting in the same location before moving in opposite directions and ending 40 inches apart.

I also have a changeup which I’m trying to make move downwards rather than horizontally. This would give me three pitches that move in completely different directions.

That’s all not to say that I don’t focus on velocity as well. Gaining velocity is a huge part of my development goals, especially through making my biomechanics as efficient as possible. During quarantine, I significantly improved the movement patterns of my glove side during release as well as improved my hip hinge pattern in my back leg, both of which will hopefully lead to more power generation. As Mike Cather said to me a couple months ago, “Move better and the velocity will naturally follow.”

MMO – As a former position player, what are your thoughts on the universal DH?

Hejka – I may have been a little disingenuous when I said before that I was a middle infielder in high school. In reality, I did play second base, but I was almost always DHed for. I was never a great hitter, and that’s when I was facing 75 mph pitching with minus offspeed stuff. So the prospect of facing 95+ mph fastballs and hammer curveballs in the batter’s box never particularly appealed to me.

As a baseball fan, I think the universal DH leads to a higher quality of play. I saw an idea from Tom Tango a while back that proposed a team should be able to play any nine players it wants in the field and any nine players it wants in the lineup. In other words, as many DHs as a team would like. I’m not sure if I fully agree with that idea, but I love the creativity and think it would lead to the highest possible level of play.

Photo by Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

MMO – How did former Mets pitcher Chad Bradford help you take the next step when you talked to him at sidearmers camp?

Hejka – The Sidearm Nation camps have played an extremely large role in my development as pitcher. I went to one of their camps in Frederick, Maryland before my sophomore year of college, and they helped me take a huge leap forward. When I saw that they were hosting a camp with Chad Bradford as a guest instructor, I knew I had to go. One of my best friends at Johns Hopkins was also a sidearm pitcher, and we flew down to Hattiesburg, Mississippi together for the camp.

Chad was an awesome guy and throughout the camp, he offered some great insights on how to throw my changeup more consistently and to improve my mechanics. But I think the most important things I learned from him were about things that are sometimes neglected in the baseball world: approach and the mental game.

The knowledge he had gained from 12 years in the bigs was obviously vast, and he was kind enough to stay for nearly two hours after the camp ended to let my friend and I pick his brain. That conversation started my trip into the world of growth mindset, using my breath, and countless other mental tools to help optimize performance. The Mets have an awesome mental skills team that are continuing to help me along that journey as well.

MMO – How do you prep for a series/game?

Hejka – I was a reliever throughout my entire college career, except for three starts at the end of my senior year of college. During my freshman year of college, preparation was not even a word in my vocabulary. I basically just showed up to the field each day and figured it out as I went along. My perspective shifted after a shaky end to that season, and my coaches instilled in me the power of routine the following fall.

As a reliever, I know I’m going to pitch around 20 times in a college season. What would lead to optimum performance in those appearances? Getting a good night’s rest the day before a game. Eating well the day before and the morning of a game. Taking my throwing and lifting seriously leading up to game day. But all of those are true of optimizing performance on non-game days as well. I’m going to pitch 20 times in a season, but the quality of those 20 appearances will be dictated by how seriously I treat the other 345 days in a year. Preparation shouldn’t be something that is done before a game or a series, it’s something that should be a way of life.

Now that’s not to say that I’m perfect in my preparation in this sense, but it’s something I am constantly working towards. The process is crucial, even when talking about the process of developing the process.

MMO – How did the lost season affect you, and what did you do during that time to stay sharp?

Hejka – This was the first year since I was little kid where I didn’t play baseball, and I miss being on the mound and competing more than anything. The uncertainty that surrounded quarantine was also tough to manage, even beyond all the health concerns. Could we still have a season? Could there be fall ball or instructs?

At first, I felt a deep feeling of loss and disappointment. I worked my ass off last offseason and was excited to see if those improvements would lead to on-field success, but felt that opportunity was taken from me.

I soon realized that pitying myself and sitting around disappointed, while natural, was a waste of my time. I thought back to something Nila, my college yoga instructor, used to say: “Things don’t happen to you, they happen for you.” I reframed the quarantine period as time that could be spent improving my game — building upon my strengths and minimizing my weaknesses. From a physical standpoint, I focused heavily on the biomechanics of my pitching delivery. As I mentioned before, I patterned in better glove side and back leg mechanics.

However, no matter how important those physicals gains were, I developed the most mentally these past few months. The process of reframing in and of itself was challenging, but committing to the grind every day with so much uncertainty in the future was even tougher. There’s this professional volleyball player named Dustin Watten that I follow on Instagram who posted something that caught my eye — what he called his “lists”.

Basically, he wrote down four or five things that, if he did them every day, would turn him into the best version of himself. I took this idea and created my own lists, and they served as a means of holding me accountable. On those days where motivation may have been lacking a bit, seeing my chain of completed days gave me that extra bit of energy to finish what I needed to do. I also started journaling and reading every day. Overall, these improvements in my mental game will carry over long after we’re playing baseball again, and they will lead to me being a better baseball player than I would have been otherwise.

MMO – Thanks for your time, sorry about it dragging out this long! One last question: is a hot dog a sandwich?

Hejka – No, a hot dog is a taco. An enchilada is sushi. And a pop tart is a calzone. (See photo above)

You can follow Josh on Twitter at @JoshHejka

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