MMO Exclusive: Relief Pitcher, Adam Ottavino

Adam Ottavino was a steadying presence at the back end of the bullpen for several different franchises throughout his 15-year Major League career. Drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in the first round of the 2006 MLB Draft, he began his professional career as a starting pitcher before transitioning to the bullpen after being claimed off waivers by the Colorado Rockies in 2012.

Raised in Brooklyn, Ottavino went on to pitch for both of his hometown teams, finding success in the Bronx and Queens. He remains the only pitcher to record a season with 65 or more appearances and a sub-2.10 ERA for both the New York Yankees (2019) and the New York Mets (2022).

Over his career, the right-hander appeared in 727 major league games, compiling a 3.48 ERA and 15.0 bWAR. One of Ottavino’s calling cards was his early adoption of the sweeper—a slider variant known for its significant horizontal movement. The pitch generated plenty of swings and misses for the New York native, contributing to a career whiff rate of 34.2%.

The veteran reliever rejoined the Yankees last April on a one-year major league deal. Ottavino made just three appearances for the club before he was designated for assignment on April 8, the second time he was designated within a matter of days. He acknowledges that his big league career is likely over, but has left the door open to pitch for Team Italy in the 2026 World Baseball Classic.

Even though Ottavino isn’t playing, he’s still keeping close tabs on the game. This summer, he debuted a live-stream YouTube show called “Baseball and Coffee,” where he goes around the league providing analysis and commentary.

I had the privilege of interviewing Ottavino over the phone, where we discussed his transition to the bullpen, the origins of his sweeper and his time with the Mets.

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

Ottavino: Growing up in New York, I was mostly a Yankees fan. My favorite player of all time is Bernie Williams. From the pitching side, I really liked David Cone, Jimmy Key, El Duque and Mariano Rivera.

There were definitely some Mets that I liked throughout the years, too. I was a big Rey Ordóñez fan, and I loved watching Al Leiter. I think everybody’s favorite player growing up was probably Ken Griffey Jr.

MMO: What was training and developing as a baseball player like growing up in Brooklyn?

Ottavino: As soon as it got warmer, I was outside every day all the way into the fall. We used to do a lot of practicing in dimly lit public school gyms. My dad would take me to the batting cage on Eastern Parkway. We would rent out the cage for half an hour in the dead of winter and just hit.

There was a lot of imaginative play inside the house when it was too cold out, or throwing snowballs outside. We spent as much time as we could working on baseball, even though it was cold.

MMO: At what point did you specifically focus on pitching?

Ottavino: They took hitting away from me going into my senior year of high school. I still hit in school-ball, but more in travel leagues. That’s when they started to pivot me mostly to pitching.

It became clear that pitching was my future; I was getting scouted only as a pitcher at that point. I was a good hitter, but at that time, there weren’t any Shohei Ohtanis rolling around. Pitching was an easy choice.

MMO: Where else did you play when you weren’t pitching?

Ottavino: Catching was my favorite position. I loved helping the pitchers out and throwing runners out. I played that a lot when I was little. Most guys would tell you that you end up at shortstop for a while, too, and I played there. As I grew more into the body that I have as an adult—a more powerful but slow-type body—I moved to the corners: third base and right field.

If I didn’t pitch, I think I would’ve tried to catch. But at a certain point, that flies in the face of pitching, so we abandoned that idea.

MMO: When did the transition occur from moving out of the rotation and into the pen? What were your initial reactions?

Ottavino: My first three games in the big leagues were starts. I was still a full-time starter at that point; I have 125 minor league starts along with the three big league starts. It wasn’t until I got put on waivers and claimed by the Rockies that I became a full-time reliever. That’s not to say it wasn’t thought about for a while before that.

I was stuck in Triple-A for parts of three years with the Cardinals. They had a really good rotation at the time; I was like the sixth or seventh depth starter. Those guys just didn’t get hurt and kept churning out good seasons.

I saw some of my weaknesses. If a team stacked a lineup with lefties, that would make it tougher on me. I saw the writing on the wall, but I also saw that my ability could play in the bullpen. I got claimed by the Rockies out of spring [in 2012], went to Triple-A, worked for the first time in a late-inning role and really took to it right away. I liked pitching more often and going right to my best pitches. It started to make sense, and I started to see myself more in that role. I always wanted to start, but I think it made sense that I ended up where I did.

MMO: It seems like it was a fairly seamless transition for you.

Ottavino: I think I took to it really easily. I loved pitching in big spots and pitching with the game on the line, and you get to do a lot of that in a relief role. I felt the hairier the spot was, the more I was able to access my ability and focus.

From a physical standpoint, it was an adjustment because it seemed easier to only throw one or two innings at a time. The regularity with which you’re pitching and learning how to manage the workload as a reliever is tricky, and it was harder for me. I think I dropped the ball on that one in the first few years. I threw too much, backed myself into a corner, and ended up getting my elbow hurt and having to get Tommy John surgery. That was something that I had to learn from on the physical side.

I made that adjustment, and I was good the rest of the way. That was probably the biggest and toughest part: understanding the difference in terms of workload between starting and relieving.

MMO: The term “sweeper” entered the mainstream lexicon just a few years ago, but it’s a pitch that’s been around for some time. I’ve heard you mention in previous interviews that you watched guys like David Cone and Jeff Nelson utilize similar pitches. Can you talk about your origins with the sweeper?

Ottavino: When I was still at Northeastern, our catcher, Luke Carlin, came to train with us in the offseason. I was throwing a bullpen to him, and he was teaching me a cutter. From that grip, I just started experimenting by seeing if I could send the ball even more to the left to see how extreme I could make it.

I kind of stumbled into the sweeper grip. I didn’t know it at the time, but it poked its head out a few years later. It was a pitch that I threw sparingly, and I would throw it sometimes in catch play to show off that I could make the ball move like that.

In the game, we were always taught to focus on the two-plane break, like left and down. That wasn’t the slider I was working with; I was working with more of a two-plane slider. When I got to Double-A, my curveball and my two-plane slider weren’t as effective as I wanted. Guys were seeing them out of my hand pretty well.

At the time, I lived with a lot of hitters, and I’d ask them for advice. They said they thought it would be nice if my pitch came out on plane out of my hand, and then to use that big break to my advantage. I started dipping my toe in the water by throwing that pitch a little more often, but I still hadn’t committed to it as my main slider until probably mid-way through 2014 or 2015. I was still throwing it a little bit, but I was throwing the two-plane one as well, so I was throwing two breaking balls.

The sample size grew, and I could see the results were much better on that horizontal breaking pitch, which we know as the sweeper. I leaned into it, started throwing it, and it felt like a cheat code because no one else was really doing it. Granted, there were pitchers in baseball history who threw it, but I don’t think we realized the effectiveness of it, at least I didn’t, until I started throwing it a lot.

At one point, I think I was throwing 75 percent sweepers in the big leagues! [Laughs.] And then everybody caught on, and it just became a thing. I realized I was just a little early to the trend.

MMO: Did you mess with many different grips?

Ottavino: No, I kind of stumbled into it. Over time, you would keep tinkering because that’s just human nature. Then I learned the science behind why it was moving the way it was, and then I was able to hone in on the proper grip and not lose it.

It’s funny, later in my career, I would run into other guys with big sweepers, like Chris Sale. I remember asking him how he gripped it, and it turned out to be kind of the same as me! It made me think that I really was onto something, and it all kind of happened by accident.

It’s kind of the reverse of the way things work now, where we know what to do, and then go execute. Before, there was a lot of trial and error. I was lucky that I stumbled into the right thing.

MMO: One of the coolest stories I read was about that vacant facility in Harlem you rented from your father-in-law, which you turned into a pitching lab following the 2017 season. What went into the decision to utilize that space in such a fashion, and what were some of the benefits you got from training there?

Ottavino: That was a huge turning point in my career. I had a tough year in 2017. My firstborn was a year old that offseason, and at the time, I had been driving out to Long Island to train. My throwing partner, Steven Matz, had moved to Nashville to be with his now wife, so I lost my throwing partner. I wasn’t doing a ton of throwing. I had parts of four years of pitching really well, so I kind of let my guard down a bit and showed up to spring training completely out of whack mechanically. At the time, there weren’t many checks and balances during spring training. We got to the season, and I was like, Oh, my God, I’m in a horrible habit here, and had the worst season of my career.

Around August of that year, I realized that I needed to spend my offseasons doing more than just working out and working on my body. I needed to practice my skills and make sure my technique was right. It wasn’t going to work driving to Long Island anymore, so I needed to find a place to train. We started looking for a storefront or something to outfit with baseball equipment.

Right around that time, my father-in-law, who is involved with that building in Harlem, said that there was a space and it might be available for a few months. My wife went, checked it out, did some measuring, and thought it was perfect. I paid for it with a Nolan Arenado-signed bat.

All of a sudden, I was able to practice on my own time and as much as I wanted. I had some friends come with me to start a lot of the processes that I used later in my career; videoing my throwing and being able to connect with what I was feeling. I was able to hone in my technique, work on new pitches, and really work on the skills side of things. That led to my career year next year, where I came in like gangbusters and was more prepared. It was really cool to be able to keep that space for almost the rest of my career.

MMO: There was a great quote from the 2019 book, “The MVP Machine,” which had a chapter that detailed the discussion you had with Rockies manager Bud Black after you worked with Driveline in 2017 and started to incorporate an Edgertronic camera and weighted balls. Black asked you whether using the Edgertronic was “going to put more things in your head,” to which you replied, “I’m going to think either way, but this makes me know what to think about.” With so much information available, how did you go about ensuring that you were getting the necessary data while not overwhelming yourself to the point where it could be a detriment?

Ottavino: I’m really good at absorbing the information. Not everybody is; some people need to keep it a bit simpler. I think at the moment of truth and pitching, you do need to boil things down as much as you can, and I was able to do that.

There was a lot of pushback at the beginning when I first showed up with my Edgertronic at the Rockies’ spring training in 2018. The pitching coach at the time thought I was undermining him, and he wasn’t too happy about it. I quickly explained that we should both look at these videos so we can learn together. Two brains are better than one, and this is definitely the new wave of technology that’s coming. We all need to learn from this, and it can make us better. Eventually, a lot of that friction went away.

A key point I made talking to Buddy about this was, I’m going to be thinking about adjustments to make daily anyway. If I have real information that gives me an actual direction to point my arrow, then I’m going to get there a lot faster. Having the high-speed camera and the movement information was really helping me point my arrow in the right direction. Every day, I could have more of a quality practice, and I could practice more efficiently. That’s super important because, as a pitcher, you can’t just throw all day; you have to get the most out of your practice time. I felt like that information helped me achieve that.

MMO: You also trained at Driveline for some time. What were some of your takeaways?

Ottavino: I was only there about a week, but it opened my eyes to a couple of key concepts. One was the concept of self-organization. Instead of being so internally focused when working on mechanics, thinking, Where’s my arm? Where’s my hip? Where’s my leg? It’s like, let’s create a constraint drill where I can keep my focus external. By constraining myself within the drill, my body will find a way to do it. It’ll self-organize and find a way to get the job done.

That was such a big thing to learn because before going there, I would say 95 percent of my pitching instruction over the years was based on internal cueing and things that are just really hard to do. It’s hard to think about your big toe or something while you’re also trying to execute a pitch. That kind of allowed me to get out of the shackles of that and allowed me to work on things with constraint drills to keep my focus external and understand that if my sights are set downrange on the catcher, that’s a much better place for me to be. It allowed my command to improve as a result of that, and kind of as a happy accident of that.

The use of some of the weighted implements, the weighted balls, and things like that [was helpful]. I never chased velocity in the way that a lot of Driveline guys do because that’s what they need to do to get noticed, but it did help me come up with a routine to stay healthy and properly warm up. Especially using a little bit of the heavier weighted balls kind of kept my arm action more efficient and shorter.

MMO: What went into your decision-making for signing a one-year deal with the Mets in March 2022?

Ottavino: I pitched for the Red Sox in ’21 after being traded there. I had a weird year where I started really good; I think I pitched well up until mid-August, and then I ran into trouble down the stretch. I really wanted to stay with the Red Sox because I felt like we had a good thing developing. At the end of the day, it didn’t work out; they weren’t aggressive in trying to sign me that offseason.

I knew that I only wanted to sign a one-year deal that year anyway, and I thought the Mets were a perfect landing spot. I always had an affinity for Buck Showalter, and they already had a pretty good group of relief arms, and I thought I could add to that mix and live at home. It just seemed like a really good opportunity, and they ended up signing me pretty late. If you recall, that was the lockout year.

I had a couple of other similar offers, but it made too much sense to stay at home. I thought the Mets were on the upswing; I liked what the Cohens were starting to do over there. And I was proven right. I went over there and we had a lot of fun! We had a great year, and I was able to re-sign with them, and it all worked out.

MMO: Comparing your ’21 season with Boston to your first year with the Mets, you lowered your walk rate from 12.7 percent to 6.2 percent, increased your strikeout rate by 5 percent, and increased your groundball rate by almost 12 percent. Can you speak on some of the changes/fixes you made in order to have such success with New York?

Ottavino: I actually think ’21 was a huge learning year for me when I was with Boston. I was around Jason Varitek a lot, and he had an unbelievable perspective. I picked his brain constantly. He was a switch-hitter, but also a catcher, and caught some of the greatest pitchers ever. His watching my game that year kind of helped me understand the matrix a little bit more of how things work.

I took all that information that I learned from talking with him and also Dave Bush, who was the pitching coach at the time, into that year with the Mets, and was able to execute what I had learned a lot better.

I thought my pitch decisions were a lot better, I was getting ahead in the count better, and therefore, I was giving myself more chances to strike guys out. For the first time, I was also pitching a little more in a pitcher’s park, so I was able to get in the zone a bit better. I finally understood the value of the first-pitch strike, and I wanted to take my chances in the zone a bit more. And it all worked out. It doesn’t always all work out, but that year things really went my way, and I was able to get on a roll.

MMO: Steve Gelbs had an in-game report during a broadcast where he discussed how you walk barefoot on the grass pre-game in a technique called grounding. When did you start to incorporate that routine, and what were some of the benefits?

Ottavino: I learned about the science of it in 2018-2019. It didn’t become a full part of my routine, I don’t think, until 2021. A big part of it was that it was a great way to start my day. I’d get to the field, and I would go right out there and walk around for a while and take it in. There’s science behind it, and I always felt like I’d come off the field and get back inside to start my catch play and everything. I was just in a much better mood and a much better place and felt a lot more present.

I’d like to go behind the pitcher’s mound and visualize that view to home plate in all of the stadiums. I felt like that helped me when I then jogged into the game to feel like I had been there before, and pre-planned my visuals. I really liked it. It was the way I liked to start my day, and I stuck with it for the rest of my career.

Other guys would ask me about it, and it would catch on, and a lot of people started dabbling in it. I think it’s a really good way to get yourself in the right mindset.

MMO: Were you a player who routinely incorporated visualization cues in your routine?

Ottavino: Yes, because I was a mess when I was younger. They took me out of the rotation when I was in Double-A because I was so wild, and I was so internally focused. Like we talked about earlier, I just couldn’t get out of my own way. The Cardinals took me out of circulation, and they sent a couple of different mental skills people to work with me, which I learned a ton from, honestly. From that point forward, not only from them, but also by talking to other players, I started to reshape my mental approach to pitching. I started focusing a lot more on that process-oriented mindset.

I remember a big turning point in my career was watching a basketball game where Kevin Durant was playing. I think he was 0-for-10 from the field at half. They interviewed him before he went to the locker room about his shooting. I remember him telling the reporter that he was going to make the next shot. He always assumed he was going to make the next shot. I had that moment of clarity where I realized that I wasn’t assuming that I was making my pitches; I was hoping that I was going to make my pitches. That was a key mindset shift.

The next day in catch play, I started throwing with the assumption that I was going to hit my spot, and I stuck with that mindset for a really long time. That alone really helped me clean up my command. I realized that the mental controls the physical. For the last 15 years, I honed in on perfecting that mental side of the game because I do believe that what you think makes all the difference.

MMO: You announced your new live-streaming baseball show on YouTube called “Baseball and Coffee” a few months ago. What was behind this idea, and what can viewers expect?

Ottavino: This is an idea I’ve had for a few years based on my own experience with the MLB dugout iPad. I think it’s cool to be able to jump into any type of action and type of pitch, get some data, and use a bunch of different camera angles. The tech was the biggest thing, and that was the biggest hurdle in getting them to let me use that. I thought it was a fun way for me to follow baseball.

I don’t really lock in on highlights too often, or read a million articles every day. Now that I’m not playing, I realized that it’s very hard to check out the game on a national level. You can pretty much follow your own team and then see the other teams when they play you. I like to jump around and see what pops, and this app gives me the ability to do that.

I’ve wanted to do it in a live stream fashion because I don’t think anyone’s tried to do that yet; to set up a gaming stream, which is where my inspiration came for the format. I do a screenshare and have engagement with the viewers on the chat, and I think that’s super key. I’m not rushing to market or monetize it. I genuinely like to have a cup of coffee and check out the cool stuff that happened in baseball the night before, and interact with people and see what they want to see.

In the future, I’d like to have other people on, have some great conversations, baseball trivia and giveaways. I’m just looking to have it grow organically and evolve and see what happens.

MMO: You’ve mentioned in previous interviews you’re interest in managing. Is that your next baseball goal?

Ottavino: Yeah, managing or running a team in a different capacity. I want to have an impact when I come back. I have no interest in being a pitching coach and things like that. I love the idea of managing because you can do little things that affect your team’s chances to win on a nightly basis. Being in the fight and in the grind is what I know. I love traveling the country and being in all the heat of all the ballparks. I love the competition factor and the players.

That’s certainly something that’s on my mind and on my bucket list that I need to check off. But I’m not going to go about it the traditional way. I’m going to do media and try and stay in the game that way, and see what opportunities come down the road.

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

Ottavino: I’m proud of the longevity. I never cheated the game, and I felt like I took on every challenge. I never shied away from Coors Field or going to play for my hometown team. I never shied away from the Yankees, or when I was with the Red Sox, going up against them. I always wanted the ball, and I pride myself on my work ethic and the way I was able to stay healthy, especially the last seven to eight years. That was important to me, being available for my team and my teammates.

I was disappointed I never won the World Series or had that big signature moment in the game. I’m proud that I played 20 seasons in pro ball, and felt I gave it my all the whole way. I can’t look back with any regrets.

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