Baseball never stops reinventing itself. Every so often, a fresh voice emerges, holding something the sport seems to have misplaced. The New York Mets just added one of those voices. Justin Willard steps into Queens as pitching becomes a crowded marketplace of theories. Each suggests clarity if you stare long enough. The intrigue is whether he can cut through the noise and supply what this team could use.
What makes Willard interesting isn’t the résumé line or the timing. It is the sense that he arrives with a clear idea of how pitchers should sharpen what they already do well, rather than chasing every trend that flashes across the league.