Hughes Corporation

G-Fafif · July 1, 2020

Mets rock the boat by adding another reliever, righty Jared Hughes.

Like to know where he gets his notions?

A week after leaving Astros camp this spring, Hughes opted out of his minor-league deal, and Houston let him walk. Hughes knew he'd be stuck in free agency until baseball resumed. In the meantime, he was searching for answers. He hoped to find them here on the homemade mound, firing fastballs into an inflatable catcher's net he named Rod Barajas, later shortened to InflataRod.

For 14 years, Hughes has made a living in pro baseball throwing sinkers — two-seam fastballs that dive beneath bats and dip below the strike zone. Hughes, a reliever who turns 35 on Saturday, trusts that pitch. He has a 2.88 ERA across nine seasons in the majors, a career that has bounced around the National League, from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee to Cincinnati to Philadelphia.

In 2018, Hughes had his best year: a 1.94 ERA with the Reds.

In 2019, he had his worst: a 4.04 ERA. Hughes' sinker lost some sink. Hitters clobbered it. Hughes allowed 13 home runs, almost twice as many as in any prior season. At year's end, a Phillies coach told Hughes his problem was with how the ball was rotating out of his hand. There was a clear connection, the coach said, between spin rotation and the sharp movement of his sinker.

“That sent me on this journey to figure out what on earth is going on,” Hughes said. “Why are some coming out of my hand differently?”

So, after failing to find the fix over the offseason, Hughes began his backyard education into the science of pitching this spring. He found the answer, too. And all it took was a most 2020 cocktail: Zoom calls, Twitter threads, yardwork, isolation, lasers, a Sony slow-motion camera, Rapsodo pitch-tracking software, Python coding, InflataRod and an aerospace engineer.

https://theathletic.com/1896023/2020/06/30/jared-hughes-crash-course-aerospace-engineer-physics-and-a-backyard-pitch-lab/https://theathletic.com/1896023/2020/06/30/jared-hughes-crash-course-aerospace-engineer-physics-and-a-backyard-pitch-lab/