Hesslink enjoying new journey with Mariners

It's only in rare instances that somebody destined for a 34th-round selection can be deemed a superstar before the Draft.
David Hesslink was no NFL-bound quarterback. Nor was he a coveted high school prospect with well-known intentions of attending a big-time college. He had a low ceiling as a pitcher that was overshadowed by the boundless potential of his analytical mind. With seven picks remaining last year, Mariners general manager Jerry DiPoto selected the Massachusetts Institute of Technology product, intending to keep the left-hander around after his playing days. When the end came sooner than Hesslink hoped, he still had all the tools Seattle wanted.
"I'm working with our player development group, with our scouting group, with our analytics group, with our advanced scouting group," said Hesslink, who joined the Mariners' front office as a baseball operations assistant before this season.

A 24-10 record in four seasons at MIT made him the winningest pitcher in program history, but the Mariners won the Hesslink sweepstakes simply by giving him an opportunity to stay on the field. He passed on a handful of front office job offers from other teams and was assigned to Class A Short Season Everett after the Draft.
Tweet from @MITengineers: @MIT_Baseball's David Hesslink selected by the @Mariners in the 34th round of the @MLBDraft! #RollTech https://t.co/cTQFOQwYR7 @MIT pic.twitter.com/oqL1IQmRAY
He pitched 27 1/3 innings out of the AquaSox bullpen last year, sporting a 5.60 ERA with 22 strikeouts.
It didn't take until the end of the summer for Hesslink to see the writing on the wall. By his recollection, he realized in his fourth appearance that his stuff might not play to the degree he'd want it to in the pros. In the eighth inning of a game at Hillsboro on July 3, Hesslink unleashed what he thought was his best inside fastball, in on the hands of center fielder Billy Endris. It was an attempt to break the left-handed hitter's bat, but instead, the ball sailed over the fence in right field.
"I kind of got to thinking that this may be short-lived," Hesslink said. "There may be better ways for me to get by than trying to beat guys with my inside fastball."
While enrolled in a class called "numerical computation" during his sophomore year at MIT, Hesslink began to work with a postdoctoral candidate named Will Cousins. They paired on a homework assignment that accurately determined run totals from past Major League seasons based on various statistics.
Their partnership flourished beyond the classroom as the analytics duo brought their act to the big leagues. Through MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program the summer before his junior year, Hesslink joined Cousins working for the Astros. They developed a tracking system for pitch clustering, taking velocity and vertical and horizontal movement for each type of pitch and seeing how it appears on a 3D map.

Hesslink followed Cousins again the next summer, this time to the Rays for an internship. He was similarly focused on a single project, working to develop an algorithm to determine appropriate defensive shifts for Tampa Bay. As Hesslink went back to school and embarked on his pitching career, Cousins remained with the Rays, rising to the role of senior data scientist in their baseball research and development department.
After Hesslink's time on the field had run out, he was tempted to reunite with Cousins but ultimately had been won over by the team that used a Draft pick on him.
"Meeting some of the people around here, I was pretty set on joining the Seattle organization," he said. "Now that I'm here full-time, and really able to sink my teeth into things, it's been a very kind of doors-open, see-everything experience. I've just had a lot more ability to increase the scope of what I do."
His title is an appropriately vague description of a job that involves him in many different departments.
"[I'm] sort of lending a hand and pitching in wherever I can," he said. "It's really been a varied experience for me so far, which has been really cool to experience and be a part of."
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He's done work in advance scouting, gathering reports on upcoming opponents, charting tendencies and more. He was also in the Draft room this year, helping to discover the next great Mariner. But his background in data research has led to his most gratifying contribution to the organization.
TrackMan data gathering has become commonplace in baseball and golf, and the Mariners use this Doppler technology at all Minor League levels. From the front office at Safeco Field, Hesslink developed an algorithm that puts the data in a digestible form for each Minor League coach.
"They can have an idea going into practice and the pregame work with the players that day," Hesslink explained. "Maybe it's what the shape of a pitcher's pitch looked like or what kind of swings the hitter was making in the box, and it creates an objective mechanism to get dialogue going between a coach and a player."

David Hesslink worked out of the AquaSox bullpen last year. (Shari Sommerfeld/MiLB.com)
This homemade tool helps give coaches direction on how the organization views its future and what work needs to be done to achieve that goal. With this information, Hesslink provides some clarity for the club's prospects -- a clarity he learned the value of at the end of last summer.
"That's something, I think, that's been real unique, because it's been a way for me to help the players I played with," Hesslink said, "to see some impact and to see a way to help them."
Hesslink wouldn't go as far as to say that a particular player -- former teammate or not -- has jumped off the charts based on reports he developed, because he sees the purpose of the system as managing the ups and downs for a given player rather than measuring players against one another.
He used the example of a pitcher trying out a new offering that gets more spin on the ball relative to his own norms. If it's something that might stay in his repertoire down the line, then the data contributes to the conversation between the player and his coach about what must be done to better develop the pitch.
"We can use these programs to establish a baseline for each guy," said the 23-year-old. "Then for that guy, whatever his skill set is in each different area that were measuring, we can see how they're deviating from that norm.
"We defer to the coaches on, 'Here's the tool, here's the different deficiencies and strengths for each player and here's the ups and downs.' And they manage the ins and outs of building a relationship with that player to convey that information with them."
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Although his desk is a bit removed from the field, the experience Hesslink gained as a player continues to impact his daily life in his new job. He approaches his decisions with an intimate understanding of the Minor League grind, a perspective he would not otherwise have had if he'd jumped from D-III ball to the front office.
When Robinson Cano was hit with an 80-game suspension after testing positive for a banned substance in May, the Mariners needed to move swiftly to replace their All-Star second baseman. Over the next 10 days, Hesslink was part of a group that brainstormed creative ideas on how to replace Cano with the roughly $10 million that became available.
"We sat down and had an afternoon roundtable that was just brainstorming ideas -- ideas ranging from pretty modest, simple ideas, to big, grand-scale fairy book ideas that will probably never actually happen in real life," he said. "We sort of threw everything out there, wrote it all up on a white board and then after we were done brainstorming, we went through the process of validating which of the ideas make sense, which don't."
The idea on the top of their lists, and the one that was ultimately taken to leadership, came to fruition as Seattle agreed to send Minor League right-handers Andrew Moore and Tommy Romero to the Rays in exchange for All-Star closer Alex Colome and outfielder Denard Span. It was a move that made logistical sense, considering the club's everyday center fielder, Dee Gordon, was also an All-Star-caliber second baseman.
"I think we were pretty committed and sold on the idea of [Gordon] being a center fielder for us," Hesslink said. "We sort of rolled with the punches that came in during the season."
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Moore was a veteran Minor Leaguer who played Double-A ball in the Mariners system for each of the past three seasons, taking steps forward to Triple-A Tacoma and his big league debut last year. Romero was a different case, selected out of Eastern Florida State 19 rounds ahead of Hesslink in the 2017 Draft.
"I didn't know Tommy super well. We just happened to miss each other at camp," said Hesslink, who was part of the decision-making process when the club flipped his Everett teammate Seth Elledge to the Cardinals for Sam Tuivailala on July 27. "It's always a strange perspective, because I see the rationale of the deal and I see why it makes sense from a 10,000-foot organizational view, but then there's also ... I know the guy.
"I know how it connects. And I know what his life change is like right now. It's always an interesting thing to balance, and it's definitely been an interesting side effect from the playing experience to the direct transition up here to the front office."
With a culture of youth already widespread in many MLB front offices, it's not far-fetched to think that Hesslink not only has a future as a general manager, but that it could come relatively soon. In his current role, he's gaining exposure to just about everything that goes into putting a product on a Major League field. That versatility could prove valuable down the line.
"To be able to have a conversation with anybody in a department and have some kind of idea of what happens in each of the different branches of the bigger, overall department [of baseball operations] ... it's certainly been a rewarding experience so far," he said. "Very fast-paced and right up my alley."