PORT ST. LUCIE \u2014 A year ago at this time, or even as the season unfolded and the Mets had the best ERA in the majors, it would have seemed far-fetched to think they now would have a new pitching coach.<\/p>\n
But a miserable few months to end the season, mainly due to injuries, helped cost Jeremy Hefner his job.<\/p>\n
Hefner quickly resurfaced with the Braves<\/a>, and Justin Willard, formerly the director of pitching for the Red Sox, took his place<\/a>.<\/p>\n So far, as the regular starting pitchers slowly work their way into Grapefruit League games, it\u2019s been mostly a feeling-out process between the 35-year-old Willard and the rotation \u2014 but they are gradually getting what Willard wants from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORT ST. LUCIE \u2014 A year ago at this time, or even as the season unfolded and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[76042,71253,74413,73172,3817,12193,171,173,172,76069,110,45911],"class_list":["post-180878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-carlos-mendoza","tag-clay-holmes","tag-inside-the-mets","tag-luke-weaver","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-mets","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news","tag-sean-manaea","tag-sports","tag-sports-plus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}