Swarzak is a much needed frontline addition to the Mets bullpen. We might as well get to know him.

Photo: Michael Laughlin/South Florida Sun Sentinel; Photo: Ginny Dixon/South Florida Sun Sentinel; Screen: MLB.com. Good Fundies illustration.

Sandy Alderson and the New York Mets absolutely had to sign, or trade for, a good/great relief pitcher during the Winter Meetings, or else there would have been some sort of rioting. Hell, even Jerry Blevins said they needed another reliever, and he’s a Mets reliever.

We were hoping for/kind of assumed former Mickey Callaway disciple Bryan Shaw would be The Acquisition, but he signed with the Colorado Rockies for some reason. We quietly hoped for Addison Reed to come back, but he is going to be too expensive, even though a team playing in New York should be able to afford him. Tommy Hunter’s name came up long enough for us to feel disappointed when he signed with the Phillies. Fortunately, the Mets reportedly got 32 year old Anthony Swarzak to sign on the dotted line of a 2-year, $14 million contract instead.

Swarzak was really good in 2017 (2.2 WAR on both Baseball Reference and Fangraphs, where he was only .1 worse than Andrew Miller) for the White Sox and Brewers. Before that, he was just kind of around. He pitched for Callaway in Cleveland for a couple of months in 2015, so there’s your connection. What else is there to the Mets’ newest acquisition? Perhaps more importantly, is he going to be any good?

Who is this guy?

Anthony Swarzak was born on September 10, 1985 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He attended Nova High School in Davie, Florida, where he became the ace of their varsity baseball team’s pitching staff. Their school motto is “We do the right thing!”, and their logo looks remarkably like the logo of the Mets. Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Goldbergs star Jeff Garlin is a notable alum of Nova High. There’s a character on The Goldbergs named Ruben Amaro Jr., who is based on former Phillies GM and current Mets first base coach Ruben Amaro Jr. In other words, there was no way Swarzak wasn’t going to end up a Met.

Screen: Nova High School Website

He committed to LSU to play college ball but opted to take the $575,000 and sign with the Minnesota Twins, who took him 61st overall in the 2004 MLB draft. Swarzak would place somewhere in Baseball America’s Top 10 list of Twins prospects every year he was in their minor league system, including in 2007 when he was popped for a 50 game suspension. All the pitcher said regarding the identity of the drug was it wasn’t performance enhancing; MILB.com’s Jonathan Mayo wrote that the “word” was “it was marijuana”. Swarzak said all of the right things and expressed all of the right emotions over the incident (“It’s definitely a good lesson in life for me” et al.)

He got called up in May 2009. He made 12 starts for the Twins that year and pitched to a 6.25 ERA. He broke a bone in his right foot and spent all of 2010 in Triple A pitching poorly before returning to the majors to pitch the game of his life on May 28, 2011 against the Angels. What was remarkable about his start in which he threw a no-hitter for 7.1 innings was that he did not know he was the starting pitcher until 10pm the night before.

Swarzak made 48 relief appearances and provided Minnesota with 96 innings of relief in 2013 to a pretty good 2.91 ERA. He took a step back statistically in 2014, which he blamed on himself for insisting on starting a couple of games at the end of the year, games in which he was not good at all (13 IP 8.31 ERA). Cleveland signed him to a minor league contract in 2015. Pitching coach Mickey Callaway was optimistic!

He’s a guy who will go out there and attack the hitters, and can pitch almost every day. He warms up fast and can give us innings. He hauled a lot of innings for the Twins, and he’s going to do the same for us.

He didn’t. After pitching decently for 13.1 major league innings (3.38 ERA 3.06 FIP), Swarzak was demoted. After he wasn’t sent back to the pros fast enough, Swarzak opted to take up the Doosan Bears on their $400,000 offer to pitch in South Korea. For the Bears he got back to that starting life in 17 of his 20 appearances. His numbers were not great, but according to Swarzak this was because he was getting used to exclusively throwing his fastball and slider while eliminating his curve and changeup entirely. Brooks Baseball says he stopped while under Callaway’s tutelage, yet I can’t find any quote where he credits him (nor Callaway taking it.)

This is what the reliever said when asked about his slider usage a few months ago:

I tried to talk to a few guys over there about a splitter, because Asia produces some of the best splitters in baseball. It just happens. That didn’t work for me. I tried and tried and tried, and it just wasn’t. I started over there for the first two months and I was two pitches — fastball, slider. Those guys over there know how to put the ball in play, no doubt about it. It’s a very offensive league. So I threw a lot of sliders. And I found something. I found a couple different breaking balls over there, a couple different slider variations, and once I came back over here I decided to go with it and see what happened with this new, developed breaking ball of mine.

In the same interview he claimed his velocity went up on both his fastball and slider because he started to lift weights during the season, and watched footage of relief pitchers who threw hard. All of this should have set up a good season for him with the New York Yankees in 2016, but that’s not how the world works. After starting and relieving in Triple A, Girardi and the team envisioned him as their innings eater to replace the demoted Luis Cessa. After he accumulated a -0.4 WAR on Fangraphs in 31 relief innings of work, Swarzak was placed on the disabled list with an inflamed right rotator cuff, ending his season. He said in 2017 he was encouraged at the time by his strikeout and walk totals.

I knew I was kind of headed in the right direction with the strikeouts being up and my walks and hits being down. I just had to get better location, and this year I do.

Swarzak also seemed to imply he did not enjoy New York, or at least how Yankees GM Brian Cashman addressed him on his first day:

I had five years of major-league service time when I came back from Korea. I sign with the New York Yankees and I go to spring training and I meet their GM in the food room one day and he goes, ‘Oh, Swarzak, you’re the guy we signed out of Korea.’ I was like, ‘All right, this is new for me. Let’s work back into this now.’

To be fair, he also said it helped motivate him. Also in the name of fairness, this wasn’t the only thing he said about the Yankees and New York. He spoke to the Chicago Tribune after he got off to his hot start in 2017 with the White Sox:

I don’t feel like I have to come in and prove myself and feel this pressure, like, ‘You better do well or you’re out of here.’ It doesn’t feel like that here. It felt like that in New York, for sure. That’s OK. Everybody has their own way to go about things, and New York has their way, and White Sox have their way. I like the White Sox way a lot better. Everyone is in it together. Guys are pulling for each other. Communication is at an all-time high for me here, as far as the coaching staff and training staff and players. Everybody gets along. Ricky [Renteria]’s whole message in spring training really hit for me. I really liked it and I’m rolling with it right now.

Speaking of “rolling with it”, Anthony seems to really like that phrase:

Rolling right along here, Swarzak obviously didn’t sour on the experience of playing in New York if he signed a contract with the Mets, so maybe he just blames Joe Girardi, which would mean he would fit right in now with the Yankees front office.