PORT STREET LUCIE — This usually doesn’t happen for Adrian Hauser.
Despite recording a high number of strikeouts in MLB games over the past few seasons, Hauser has consistently deviated from that trend.
He calls himself an “old-school pitcher.”
Getting off to a successful start with a grounder, Hauser embraced his style rather than veering towards the charm of strikeouts.
That became clear during his five years as a starting pitcher for the Brewers. He struck out 10 or more batters just three times – something Kodai Senga accomplished five times with the Mets last season alone – and finished with five or fewer hits in 102 of 120 at-bats. The regular season begins.
This style also resurfaced during Hauser’s first two spring outings with the Mets, but on Sunday, in a 3-1 loss against the Tigers, Hauser pitched a perfect 3¹/₃10 He struck out five of his batters.
Hauser added depth to the rotation when the Mets acquired him in December, but with Chiga coming through his shoulder soreness, the rotation is more needed than ever.
The 31-year-old will need the necessary defense behind Hauser and his ground ball pitchers to overcome his career inconsistency, get as many starts as possible, and build on the progress the 31-year-old has shown in 2023. This matched the lowest walk rate of his career.
“We’re living in a game right now where there are a lot of strikeouts, and players are always getting strikeouts,” Hauser told the Post on Friday. “Sometimes it just doesn’t really exist for me.”
That wasn’t the case against the Tigers. Hauser opened the starting lineup with three straight strikes to Parker Meadows and finished with a 1-2-3 frame. He struck out former No. 1 overall pick Spencer Torkelson in the next inning.
In the bullpen for the start of the game, Hauser worked on getting his front foot higher. This will allow him to synchronize his upper body with other aspects of his mechanics.
It wasn’t a drastic change, but Hauser was feeling impatient on the mound. And he needed just 37 pitches (27 of strikes) to do it all for Hauser to feel “really close to where we need to be.”
“He’s a guy who knows how to pitch,” coach Carlos Mendoza said after the game. “He’s going to move the ball. He’s going to use that sinker to get ground balls. But the fact that he was heavy today, he has life and he brings it on both sides of the plate. If you can use it, it will help you a lot.”
Last year, Hauser continued to incorporate his slider to start the second half. He always had the pitch – there was no need to change the way he pitched.
But he continued to mix and match sliders and sinkers, hoping to throw backdoors to left-handed batters and away from right-handed batters. Disguise became an element of going out.
According to Baseball Savant, his slider usage increased from 13 percent to 17 percent from 2022 to 2023, a 10 percent increase compared to 2021. At the same time, Hauser’s walk rate (7.1) was the lowest since becoming a starting pitcher and ranked in the highest percentile (70th) among other MLB pitchers.
“I wanted to throw more strikes and things like that, so I just focused on hitting the spots and hitting the spots,” Hauser said Friday about the walks. “I try not to let advantage counts slip away when I get in front, and I try to keep guys away and not let them stick to me.”
Still, it didn’t lead to a strikeout.
Hauser finished in the 4th percentile for strikeout rate and 27th percentile for strikeout rate, up from the 1st and 6th percentiles, respectively, in 2022.
In Hauser’s eyes, that’s fine.
You don’t have to go out like Sunday every time. He will continue to add the slider to his pitching repertoire. He fine-tuned his changeup grip this spring with the Mets and rediscovered the success he had with his pitches in 2019 and the first half of last season.
And if these two grips can both work together, that’s the ideal scenario for rotation. Hauser will have a complete collection of pitches and a strong identity as a pitcher.
“It would be really nice to have both working at the same time,” Hauser said.
