MMO Exclusive: Former Mets Pitcher, Steve Trachsel

Steve Trachsel might not have been the hardest-throwing pitcher or one with the best stuff on a staff, but the sixteen-year right-hander made up for it with his ability to take the ball every fifth day and provide consistency.

From 1996 through the 2004 season, Trachsel made 290 starts, which was tied with Brad Radke for the fourth-most in baseball. Trachsel’s 1,775 1/3 innings pitched was good for 12th-most in that same span.

Drafted in the eighth round by the Chicago Cubs in the 1991 MLB Draft, Trachsel made his major league debut in 1993, making three late starts at the end of the Cubs’ fourth-place finish that year. The following season, Trachsel made 22 starts and posted a 9-7 record with a 3.21 ERA and 3.4 bWAR, finishing fourth in the N.L. Rookie of the Year voting.

Trachsel made his lone All-Star team in 1996, where he tossed 200-plus innings for the first time in his career while posting career bests in ERA (3.03), ERA+ (142) and WHIP (1.185). After several more seasons with the Cubs, Trachsel signed a one-year deal with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and was the club’s Opening Day starter in 2000. Trachsel tossed 200+ innings for the fifth-straight season and ended the year with the Toronto Blue Jays after a mid-season trade.

In December 2000, Trachsel signed a two-year deal with the New York Mets after GM Steve Phillips had been showing interest in the California-native for quite some time.

After getting off to a rocky start to his Mets career, in which he posted an 8.24 ERA over his first eight starts, Trachsel went down to Norfolk, Virginia, to the team’s Triple-A club to clear his head and work on a few mechanical adjustments. When he returned in early June, Trachsel went on to post a 3.35 ERA over his final 20 starts of the season.

Overall, Trachsel made 160 regular season starts with the Mets from 2001-2006 (14th-most in Mets history), and appeared in at least 30 games four out of the six seasons in Queens. Besides his consistency in toeing the rubber every fifth day, Mets fans remember Tracshel for his measured work on the mound in which he earned the nickname ‘Human Rain Delay’.

The 2008 season would be Trachsel’s last season in the majors as he appeared in 10 games with the Baltimore Orioles before being released in mid-June. Post-retirement, Trachsel has focused on his family and has continued to collect and build an impressive wine collection, with over 3,000 bottles in his wine cellar.

I had the privilege of speaking to Trachsel over the winter, where we discussed his time in New York, being nicknamed the “Human Rain Delay” and what he’s been up to after his playing days.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?

Trachsel: The first one is probably Steve Garvey since I grew up in Southern California. The standard pitcher answer, other than Tom Seaver, would be Nolan Ryan. He was the guy that I had a poster on my wall of growing up.

MMO: At what point during your development did you start focusing specifically on pitching?

Trachsel: I always pitched. The Little League I played in did tee-ball for the first half of the season, and then the second half they started pitching. If you walked a kid, which we all did, instead of them going to first base they got to hit off the tee, so you still had a chance to get them out.

I pitched in Little League, high school, American Legion and college. I did strictly pitching once I got to college.

MMO: When looking at your All-Star season in 1996, that was the first year you tossed 200+ innings and you also lowered your hits-per-nine, walks-per-nine and posted the lowest ERA of your career at 3.03. Not to mention, your one-hit shutout against the Houston Astros in May.

Was there anything you worked on or changed coming into that season that you can attribute to the success you had?

Trachsel: I don’t know if it was specifically one thing but the year prior was a poor year for me. My consistency was all over the place. There were games where I remember talking about it with my teammates where I had never been hit that hard probably since high school. I felt like I was making good pitches but I was still giving up hard-hit balls and lots of runs.

I really started focusing more on my strength, core and started to learn more about how to read scouting reports and how to apply it to my stuff and pitches. The consistency was probably the biggest factor every five days, just being locked in and being able to execute pitches.

MMO: Fast forward two years later and you were the pitcher that gave up Mark McGwire‘s 62nd home run in 1998, which broke Roger Maris‘ single-season record that held for over thirty-five years. What memories do you have leading up to that start and that pitch?

Trachsel: We were in the playoff hunt with the Cubs and that was the first time that had gone on for quite a while. That was probably our focus as a team. We had pre-game and pre-series meetings and it was discussed [McGwire’s home run record]. It was pretty well established to our team and pitching staff that we didn’t want to be the team to give up that homer.

Obviously, it didn’t work out that well. I knew pretty much the night before he hit No. 61 off Mike Morgan that there was going to be a big focus for everybody the next day, especially from a crowd standpoint. It had been a focus from the reporters for weeks, especially because of what Sammy [Sosa] was doing as well.

It was supposed to be a fastball down-and-in and it just kind of cut a little bit more third instead of the corner. I just missed by location by maybe six inches and that was enough. It was a line drive down the line and I thought when he first hit it that it was going to be a line-drive foul or a double off the wall at the most.

MMO: To look for a silver lining, that home run had to be one of the shortest McGwire hit in 1998.

Trachsel: It was definitely the shortest one of the year that he hit. Quite possibly that could’ve been one of the shortest he hit in his entire life (laughs).

MMO: What are your memories from signing with the Mets as a free agent in December 2000? Were there other teams that had serious interest in signing you?

Trachsel: It kind of goes back to 2000. I had a poor year my last year in Chicago and we had long discussions with Steve Phillips about coming to the Mets that year. They were probably on the top of my list at that time. He was really candid and honest with us about having to move a couple of other starters to make it happen, unfortunately, he wasn’t able to make it happen.

I ended up in Tampa [in 2000], but coming in as a free agent the next year Steve again was one of the first GMs to call. If I remember correctly, I had the same offer from the Mets and the Angels.

I always wanted to play in New York, I wanted that challenge of having that pressure and having to rise to continue to be consistent every five days, year-in-and-year-out. I just felt like Anaheim would’ve been much more difficult personally because that’s where I was from, so I was going to be dealing with family tickets every five days and all that type of stuff.

New York was the place I wanted to go to and it was a pretty simple decision for me.

MMO: Your Mets career didn’t get off to a great start, as you posted an 8.24 ERA in your first eight starts. You went down to Norfolk and came back up in June and posted a 3.35 ERA over your final 20 starts. Can you talk about what you worked on in Norfolk and how that appeared to be beneficial for you?

Trachsel: It kind of goes back to how it happened in my second year in Chicago where it was getting hit like I’ve never been hit before, and I knew in the back of my head that it wasn’t my stuff or anything like that. It was something different.

We did find that there were a few games where I was tipping my pitches. One of the good things about being in the league for a long time and the amount of movement going around was that you could get messages to guys from other teams that would let you know, like ex-teammates and ex-coaches. They would say, “We just want to let you know that this is what we’re seeing. We’re not playing you anymore and we really like you, we have your pitches, basically.”

That was a part of it. Probably the biggest part of it was no matter how badly I wanted to come to New York, I was not mentally prepared for New York. It’s just a completely different place to be than anywhere else. I think maybe the media being 24/7, 365, and always there to talk to you and there was no real way to get away from them. Unfortunately, the only way to do that was to go down to Norfolk.

There was a precedent set with Bobby Jones who was a guy I played against since college and went down and worked for him. They brought that up and Steve Phillips and the front office were great and supportive. We basically made a plan; I knew how many days I was going to go down for or what the maximum number of days was going to be. I knew the plan was to not have any discussions with the New York reporters during that time, just to kind of clear my head.

I basically just went down and worked on the basics as far as locating pitches, moving guys’ feet, and fine-tuning the pitch tipping thing, which was a real simple fix. And then I end up throwing that no-hitter and the whole plan went out the window (laughs).

MMO: I read that while you were down in Norfolk, you got to work with renowned mental skills coach, Harvey Dorfman. Is that true?

Trachsel: I did, yes. I had a little bit of introduction to Harvey’s book when I was in Tampa with Larry Rothschild. I actually got to work with him one-on-one during that time and that was a big part of being able to clear my head and separate the media aspect of New York. It was about being able to simplify everything into executing one pitch at a time, creating a mantra to block out everything else and to help take the pressure I was putting on myself and separate that from the pressure that was being put on me from outside sources.

I just tried to make things simpler when I was on the mound so that it was easier to clear my head and just focus on executing quality pitches.

MMO: You recorded three one-hit shutouts in your career; one in 1996 and the other two in 2003. Does one stand out above the rest for you?

Trachsel: The first one was against the Astros, and it was kind of weird because the base hit was the first batter of the game, so that was a little bit different. The one in Anaheim was probably the most rewarding because, as I said before, as much as I didn’t want to play there because of the amount of family and friends, that became special because there was so much family and friends there. If I remember correctly, it was Father’s Day, and my dad was at the game so that was special to be able to do that on that day with him in attendance. I just wish I had thrown a better curveball to David Eckstein, and it probably would’ve been a no-hitter which would’ve been truly amazing.

MMO: You weren’t an overpowering guy and didn’t record a ton of strikeouts. You obviously pitched during an era of explosive power and offense; what was your game plan like on the mound and what were you trying to execute in each start? Was it a lot of just hitting your spots and keeping batters off balance to get outs?

Trachsel: It varied from team to team and hitter to hitter, but in a nutshell, I was a control guy that didn’t strike out a lot of guys. I was trying to force contact, and in an ideal situation, the hitter would put the ball in play in the first three to four pitches. It was basically setting up pitches, locating low-and-away and down-and-in, making guys uncomfortable by moving their feet, changing speeds, adding and subtracting off my fastball and doing the same with my curveball, getting them to chase splits and changing eye levels. Many basic things that you try to teach kids how to pitch in high school and college; the ABCs of pitching.

Unfortunately, you don’t see a lot of that now. I think a lot of that was magnified by coming up in the Cubs’ system with Greg Maddux in the big leagues. Being in the minor leagues it was the ideal that they wanted guys like myself to be able to do that and it was one of the first or second questions I got when I got to the big leagues in Chicago was, “Congratulations, you’re here to replace Greg Maddux. How does that make you feel?” It was like, oh, thanks. I’m 22 and I just got here, and I didn’t even have my first game yet! But pretty much it’s pitching 101-type stuff of being able to execute it at a very high and detailed level.

MMO: During your 16-year career, you recorded at least 30 starts nine times, & 200+ innings seven times. You were a workhorse and someone that could be counted on to provide a ton of innings. How much pride do you take in the fact that you were able to toe the rubber that consistently?

Trachsel: It’s something that I took a lot of pride in. I liked to be able to sit down with the pitching coach and the manager in spring training and you have a meeting, and they would go through their expectations of what they wanted from you during the year. It was easy for me to look them in the eye and say, ‘Ink my name in every five days. Not pencil it in, ink it in.’

Having the manager and pitching coach not have to worry about whether I’d be able to pitch every five days was something I really took a lot of pride in. And that goes into the work that I learned to do in the offseason, to put in that extra hard work to make sure that you were going to be strong for an entire year.

The 200 innings and not missing starts and going out there every five days helps you get to that and putting a lot of pride in handling the bat being in the National League. If you can’t get a bunt down, I can’t imagine a more embarrassing thing then having to be pinch-hit for so that the guy going up to the plate can lay down a bunt because as a pitcher you can’t do it. I was a decent hitter growing up, wasn’t great, there were times early in my career where they hit and run with me, so I felt a lot of pride in being able to handle the bat that way. I always thought that I wasn’t going to get pulled from a game because I can’t get a bunt down or I can’t move a runner. If you’re coming to get me it’s because it’s late in the ballgame or I was getting my butt kicked. Those were the only two options I wanted on the table.

MMO: In 2006, you made the second-most starts on the Mets (30), tossed the second-most innings (164.2), and tied with Tom Glavine for the most wins on the club (15). That was a special season and one that many fans felt was bound for a World Series celebration. What memories do you have from ’06?

Trachsel: A lot of what should have been. It was a great year and we had such a great team and we all got along so great. It was probably one of the best teams I’ve been on where every single guy was absolutely pulling for each other, and we all had each other’s backs.

I really feel like that was a team that would’ve probably won the World Series had we had gotten there, and we just came up a little bit short, unfortunately. I was happy that I was able to bounce back because I had the back surgery prior, so that was something that I put a lot of work going in to just come back healthy and be successful. And, man, Adam Wainwright, you know?

MMO: That pitch still haunts me but that was such a tough pitch. I think that would’ve buckled anyone’s knees.

Trachsel: Yeah, at six-foot-seven with a release of probably eight feet and to be able to make a ball break that much. And obviously, he’s still doing it now, so it just shows you how great he was then and how great he’s continued to be.

MMO: You were also the starting pitcher when the Mets clinched the N.L. East on September 18. You had a terrific start of 6.1 scoreless innings while allowing just three hits. What do you remember from that start?

Trachsel: I’ve always been the guy, in my head anyway, that when the game is on the line I wanted to be the guy with the ball. I just felt like it was much easier for me to be on the mound in that situation instead of sitting in the dugout and watching and not being able to contribute other than cheering.

The stadium was rocking and it was just a big situation for us to clinch. In our minds, at the point, that was just one step to where we felt we wanted to be. It’s always very special to think about it afterward but at the moment and that time it was just step one of what we wanted to get done.

MMO: Mike Piazza caught 71 of your career games; the second-most of any catcher you threw to. How did you like throwing to Piazza?

Trachsel: He was great. He got a lot of grief, I guess, for not being a great catcher and I just don’t understand that. I loved him, he was a big catcher, so he gave me a great frame to throw to, he blocked balls great, we always had great meetings pre-game and we executed really well as far as our game plans.

Something I always enjoyed with having him back there was with the game on the line and a tough 3-4-5 guy at the plate, he had been in that situation for 12 years already, so he knew what he was facing as a hitter and we could use that to use that against the hitters we were facing as a battery. He could see how guys were moving their feet in that situation or if they were looking to go the other way, and we could make those quick adjustments.

I loved throwing to Mike, we always had a great relationship off the field as well.

MMO: Did the Human Rain Delay nickname ever bother you? Do you remember when that moniker stuck?

Trachsel: I don’t know if it bothered me, I guess when it first came out I didn’t quite understand it until I really went and looked at my tape (laughs). I was like, holy shit, I’m slow! I just kind of embraced it, I mean, there are a lot of worse things you can be known for (laughs). And I heard all of them in New York, Philly and San Francisco!

I just kind of embraced it even to the point where we made a beer. I’m a huge wine guy but then I got into craft beers in San Diego, and we made a collaboration beer and we called it the Human Rain Delay. It took three and a half years to make so we came up with that idea and used that moniker and just embraced it.

It’s something that when it was going on on the field it wasn’t conscious in my head, but when I finally looked at those tapes I was like okay, we need to make a conscious effort to get better, and we did that.

I believe it was Bobby Valentine and Charlie Hough in probably 2002, and I had Charlie with a stopwatch in the dugout during spring training. Instead of coming in in-between innings and asking how I felt with this or that, we talked about the time that I was taking. It was something with runners on base, so I don’t know if that was something subconsciously in the back of my head where I couldn’t allow the guy to run, and I’ll do anything I can to keep them from running or from scoring.

I don’t’ know when it started, but I’m sure it started years before that, and it was never really addressed. I think if you’re winning, they’re going to let you do whatever you need to do no matter how long it takes. Then when you start to struggle, or things aren’t going well, that’s when they start looking for things.

MMO: Did the work you put in with Hough during spring training aid in helping to make you quicker on the mound?

Trachsel: I wouldn’t say I ever got quick; I definitely got better. It was never going to be go up there and fire, fire, fire. I think my process with visualization and stuff in my head just took longer even though in my head it wasn’t taking as long as I thought it was. But it was a conscious effort at one point to get better and obviously, it’s going to help with the defense behind me.

We had fun with it in making the beer, we used to joke about all the extra beer that the vendors sold during my starts. I had a vendor in Chicago a couple of years later when I went to a game, and he came over and said he was there when I was with the Cubs, and he actually thanked me (laughs). Maybe that’s when it first started [the nickname], while I was in Chicago. I guess there were a few other guys that had that moniker as well so maybe we’ll start a club (laughs).

MMO: You mentioned that you’ve created a beer and that you’re a big wine connoisseur. What else has Steve Trachsel been up to post-playing career?

Trachsel: I’ve got two new children; I have a two-year-old and a four-month-old. So, they take up a lot of my time. My wife’s family is from New Jersey and we try to get back there as much as possible. My other daughter is at Pace University, so I’ll be making trips back to New York a lot more often to see her. My oldest son is in Flagstaff going to school there, so I’m raising kids and taking care of the family.

I call it the retired life but I like to stay busy as much as possible. I was traveling a lot like everyone else until the pandemic. I do the Mets Fantasy camp every year, I’ll be down in Port St. Lucie. That’s a great, great time. A lot of those Mets fans have been going there for years, and they know more about baseball and the Mets than I ever will! But it’s a ton of fun and you build a lot of great relationships out of it.

MMO: Could you ever see yourself getting back in the game in some capacity?

Trachsel: Once you’re out it’s difficult to get back in. Omar Minaya, after I couldn’t find another pitching job, offered me the pitching coach job in Brooklyn. Living in California and being away from my first two kids so much, I just felt like it was the wrong time to do that. I wanted to be home and spend more time with them. After another two-three-four years and you haven’t tried to get back in, it’s tough to get back in.

I do the fantasy camps and make visits to New York, I’m always open to do those as much as possible and I try to make myself available. The game is so different now and I see so many of my friends are scouts and older scouts that are losing their jobs because the analytics are taking over so much. I don’t know where I would fit in at this point if I were to come back.

MMO: Looking back on your career, what are you most proud of?

Trachsel: I don’t know if I’ve ever analyzed that. I guess longevity would have to be a part of it along with my consistency, except the one year with the health. I like to think that I was a good teammate and competitor. I know on the mound I wasn’t a showy guy, so I don’t think I did anything to show anyone up. Respect the game, respect your teammates, respect your opponents, and give it your all and when you come off the field don’t second guess anything that you did.

MMO: Thanks very much for some time today, Steve, and for sharing some great insight and memories.

Trachsel: My pleasure. Take care.

Follow Steve Trachsel on Twitter, @Traxxx46

The post MMO Exclusive: Former Mets Pitcher, Steve Trachsel first appeared on Metsmerized Online.