Sources say Eric Chavez's hiring will cause dramatic shift after Mets hitters had analytics overload last season

It remains to be seen what type of impact Eric Chavez will have as the new hitting coach in Queens but one thing is for sure.

His hiring signals a dramatic shift in philosophy after a 2021 season in which the Mets went so heavy on analytics that players expressed frustration at the daily information overload, while manager Luis Rojas became so exasperated by his hitters’ confused approach that he began sitting in on pregame hitting meetings to provide a voice of reason.

According to sources, players were presented with so much information regarding a pitcher’s tendencies and the specific movement of his pitches -- by analytics executives, not coaches -- that it messed with their heads.

As one Met told an acquaintance last summer: "We leave every hitters’ meeting thinking we’re about to go face Cy Young."

That’s no excuse for the Mets’ failures at the plate last season, which were a huge reason they underachieved their way to a 77-win season. Even sources who believe the players had legitimate complaints acknowledge that some didn’t take enough personal responsibility for their poor performance.

Yet it seems fair to say the drumming of analytics into the heads of hitters as daily preparation can’t be ignored as a factor that created negative vibes around the ballclub.

You might remember Rojas repeatedly expressing his own frustration in his postgame Zoom sessions when the Mets hit the skids in the second half of the season, saying that his hitters didn’t seem to be prepared to attack hittable fastballs, especially with men on base.

According to someone close to the situation, that was Rojas’ way of protesting to the front office about the overuse of analytics, in particular after the early-season firing of old-school hitting coach Chili Davis.

"It was driving him crazy," the person said of Rojas. "But he was kind caught between a rock and a hard place. He was a lame duck manager so he didn’t feel he could go against where the organization was at the time, but he knew it was hurting his team.

"He knew the players were furious about it, that they felt they were being overwhelmed with information about what pitch to look for in this count, what not to look for in that count. He was constantly talking to certain guys, trying to get them out of their own heads. That’s why he started going to the hitters’ meetings and speaking up."

If you’re asking why Rojas didn’t simply demand a change in the way the meetings were being run, well, come on, we all know the deal by now: In this analytics era, the front office runs the show and the powers of many managers have been significantly diminished.

Perhaps that will change to some extent for the Mets now with the hiring of Buck Showalter, and indeed indications are the longtime manager was brought in at least partly as a reaction to what could be viewed as an overuse of power by the front office last season.

So how and why did it come to that in 2021?

In talking to several people with insight into the situation, I came away believing Steve Cohen had all the right intentions in his first year as owner in trying to turn the analytics department, badly understaffed by today’s MLB standards when he took over, from a weakness to a strength.

That is, he beefed up the department and empowered the front office to utilize analytics in ways the organization hadn’t been able to in the past.

In addition, because the Mets were forced to fire newly hired GM Jared Porter for sending unwanted, sexually explicit text messages to a female reporter in 2016, Zack Scott was elevated to acting GM, and his previous experience was primarily as an analytics analyst with the Boston Red Sox.

All of that, as well as Sandy Alderson’s willingness to cede power to Scott, led the analytics execs to assert their influence with the approval of their superiors.

On the pitching side, sources say Jeremy Hefner had a solid working relationship with the analytics people, able to take their information and interpret it for his pitchers as he saw fit.

On the hitting side, however, there was conflict from the start with some of the analytics execs and Davis, whose more traditional belief in situational hitting and using the entire field went against the new-age statistical-driven approach that favors launch angle hitting for power.

In addition, one source says Davis objected at times to the way information was presented in absolute form during pregame hitting meetings, citing a specific example related to a game on April 20 against the Cubs when Jake Arrieta held the Mets to one run over five innings in a 3-1 win.

According to the source, an analytics exec instructed the hitters in the pregame meeting to eliminate Arrieta’s changeup from their thinking, saying the veteran right-hander almost never threw the pitch anymore.

Davis objected at the time, saying it was too early in the season to draw that type of conclusion, and it was his opinion that Arrieta would use the changeup more against certain Mets hitters than he’d done in his first three starts of the season. That led to some back-and-forth between an analytics exec and the hitting coach.

As it turned out, Arrieta threw 11 changeups in his five innings, according to ESPN’s game tracker, and got some key outs with the pitch, angering the players, notably Dominic Smith, about being misled by their analytics people.

And though Davis proved to be right, at least to a certain extent, his pushback in the meeting may well have played a key role in him getting fired a couple of weeks later. At least that was the feeling players expressed and others close to the situation thought as well.

"The analytics people used their power to make changes as they saw fit," was the way one source put it.

"Chili got fired because he hated the way things were being done," said another. "And the players loved Chili. They all knew he had been a great hitter and they respected what he had to say."

The Mets, remember, replaced Davis with Hugh Quattlebaum, a career minor leaguer as a player and coach, and someone the hitters saw as an analytics guy who could give them information but didn’t have a feel for to how to talk to them about competing in the batter’s box at the major league level.

"They desperately missed Chili for that reason," a source said. "And they desperately need a guy who can take the analytics information but put it in the right perspective. They need someone who can make sure guys are in the right headspace going to the plate, being a hitter with a plan rather than this absolutism about what is going to happen in every situation."

There’s a belief among the same sources that at some point Cohen became very much aware of the players’ frustration with the perceived overuse of analytics -- perhaps in no small part because Francisco Lindor reportedly had conversations regularly with the owner.

How that may have played a role in the hiring of Billy Eppler as GM is unclear, but certainly in signing off on Showalter, Cohen was agreeing the ballclub needed a change in philosophy. Showalter made a point of saying at his introductory news conference that he wants all the information he can get, and always has, but it’s hard to envision him allowing an analytics exec to run the pregame hitters meeting.

Likewise the hiring of Chavez as hitting coach is an indication the Mets again value the need for someone in that role with major league presence.

As Eppler put it earlier this offseason, the organization wanted someone with "the experience of living and dying in the batter’s box, for lack of a better term."

In short, someone who can relate to players on a human level. During a 17-year career in the big leagues, Chavez put up solid numbers and was known as a thinking man’s hitter, going back to his earliest seasons with the Oakland Athletics.

Carlos Pena, in fact, recalled on MLB Network this week how, upon being traded to the A’s in 2002, he was influenced by Chavez.

"He was the first guy to talk to me about having a plan at the plate," Pena said. "I had always been a see-it-and-hit-it guy, but Chavez said, 'You’ve got to have a plan up there.' He changed the way I thought as a hitter."

As hitters will tell you, having a plan can incorporate analytical information, but it doesn’t mean letting it dictate your thinking. It can mean looking for certain pitches in certain areas of the strike zone, especially early in the count, and then being ready to adapt when behind in the count.

Most often I’ve heard hitters say it means having an uncluttered mind, focused on how to attack the pitcher, but, above all, ready to compete. And as the frustration expressed by players and even the manager seems to make clear, the minds of Mets hitters last year were anything but uncluttered.