New Braves pitching coach Jeremy Hefner wants to solve problems, not overhaul

Before baseball provided him with a path to play and then coach in the major leagues, Jeremy Hefner wanted to be a chemical engineer.

The interest stemmed from his math/science bent and a relative who lived in Saudi Arabia and worked in the oil and gas industry. “I always thought that was super cool to live somewhere else and work and get paid to do this thing,” the Braves’ new pitching coach told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

As he diagnoses flaws in deliveries and develops pitch sequences to induce ground balls and strikeouts, Hefner has retained an engineer’s mindset.

“So I think of baseball more in like, problem solving as a puzzle,” Hefner said in a phone interview from his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “And not in a complicated way but more so like there’s this thing that we want our pitchers to be, and that’s to be elite, to be the best that they can be.”

The approach helped Hefner become a highly regarded pitching coach in six seasons with the New York Mets. Although he was let go after the Mets’ disappointing 2025 season, such was Hefner’s standing that he had been retained through multiple general manager and managerial changes with the franchise.

And it made him an attractive option for the Braves to oversee a possible future Hall of Famer in Chris Sale, a strikeout king in Spencer Strider, a rising star in Spencer Schwellenbach and a number of other stout arms.

“This is a really robust group and dynamic group,” Hefner said. “Good bullpen, good starting rotation, good prospects coming up in the minor leagues. It’s a pitching coach’s dream to walk in.”

Since he was announced Nov. 5 as new manager Walt Weiss’s pitching coach, the 39-year-old Hefner has been busy getting to know his pitchers and the organization. Growing up in Oklahoma, Hefner had a familiar introduction to the Braves — watching them on TBS. That led to competing against them with the Mets, first as a pitcher and then pitching coach.

He didn’t have a connection with Weiss or president of baseball operations and general manager Alex Anthopoulos, but the latter’s prolonged hiring process to hire Brian Snitker’s successor gave him an opportunity to learn in depth about numerous coaching staff possibilities. That included Hefner.

“They’re ready to win World Series and compete for World Series and that was all very attractive to me,” Hefner said.

Hefner takes over a staff that led the majors in ERA in 2024 before getting battered by injuries in 2025, leading to the dismissal of longtime pitching coach Rick Kranitz. He has no plans to overhaul, but to figure out where he can be of help.

With each pitcher, it’s understanding his offseason program and if he might be helped, for instance, with adding a pitch, taking one away or adjusting it, and then testing it in spring training ahead of the season.

“I like getting to know people,” he said. “I like getting to know pitchers. I like to understand what makes them tick and try to help them be the best that they can be. That’s ultimately my job.”

With Strider, who returned in 2025 from elbow surgery to repair a damaged UCL, Hefner noted the documented change in Strider’s arm angle. In his masterful 2023 season, he unleashed his fire from an arm angle of 48 degrees, according to Baseball Savant. In 2025, it dropped to 42 degrees.

The angle of the arm in the delivery “affects everything,” Hefner said. “It affects the movement and stuff like that.”

Strider struggled in 2025 — he had an ERA of 4.45 as his four-seam fastball averaged 95.5 mph, significantly off his 2023 numbers of 3.86 and a blazing 97.2. Still, Hefner gave a confident update of the 2023 MLB strikeout king.

“He’s well on his way to knocking this out and conquering this goal and I think he’ll get there,” he said.

While the importance and value of strikeouts have increased in tandem with the emphasis on home run hitting, Hefner doesn’t tie himself to it.

“You’ve either got to punch people out or you’ve got to limit damage,” he said. “So you’ve either got to be a strikeout guy or you’ve got to be a ground ball guy or you’ve got to be some combination of both those things.”

Part of that strategy prioritizes staying in advantageous ball-strike counts, such as getting to two strikes before two balls.

The problem for the Mets last season, Hefner acknowledged, was giving up too many walks. (Their walks-per-nine rate last year was 24th in MLB.)

Over the past two combined seasons, the Mets ranked third in ground ball rate and barrel rate and eighth in strikeouts per nine innings, according to FanGraphs. Only two other MLB teams finished in the top 10 in all three categories. Interestingly, one was the Braves and the other was another NL East rival, the Phillies.

It speaks to Hefner’s adaptability that the Mets did it with a staff that was first in MLB in fastball percentage in 2024 and 21st in 2025, per FanGraphs.

“Ideally, being able to diversity within your personnel and having different types of pitchers and angles and pitch types and velos and all that kind of stuff, I think that helps out, helps the whole group,” Hefner said.

Among Hefner’s greatest successes in New York was with Luis Severino, whom the Mets signed before the 2024 season. He had been an All-Star with the Yankees in 2017 and 2018, but had been limited in his health and productivity through the 2023 season. He made 18 starts in 2023 with a 6.65 ERA.

In 2024, he drastically reduced his fastball usage and stayed healthy, making 31 starts and lowering his ERA to 3.91.

Hefner’s approach to adjusting repertoire is understanding a pitcher’s strengths and then figuring out “what can we add or subtract to make those good things or those great things even better?” he said. “So that’s kind of the approach that we’re taking with each guy. For some guys, it’s a change-up. For other guys, it’s a sweeper. For other guys, it’s a cutter.”