Long Island's Kevin Mahoney reaches majors with Mets as batting practice pitcher
Sports Jobs: First in a series exploring jobs Long Islanders have in the world of sports.
Kevin Mahoney’s baseball odyssey began in Miller Place, where he starred for the Panthers in high school and made frequent trips to Shea Stadium, fostering a love for the pastime that he decided to turn into his life.
Now, that journey has brought him home — sort of.
Mahoney returned to New York this season, his first with the Mets as a batting practice pitcher and de facto coaching assistant, a behind-the-scenes role that offers a window into how a modern major-league club operates.
Twenty years after leaving Long Island for Buffalo, where he played third base at Canisius, Mahoney is not only back, but in the major leagues.
“It’s unreal. It really is,” Mahoney, 37, said in a recent interview at Citi Field. “I never made it to the major leagues as a player — or a coach at the time. So when a big-league position came open [over the offseason], it was a dream come true. I was nervous for that to actually happen, or to miss out on that opportunity. I’m grateful that it came through.”
Mahoney’s path has been winding. How does a 2005 Newsday All-Long Island shortstop end up in Queens as a batting practice pitcher? The story includes bit roles from Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.
After setting records at Canisius, Mahoney was drafted by the Yankees in 2009, the start of his dozen years with the organization. In Mahoney’s first full professional season, one of his coaches was Carlos Mendoza. Mendoza and Mahoney remained colleagues for about a decade, first when Mahoney was a minor-league infielder, then after he transitioned to being a minor-league coach.
This past winter, when the Mets wanted to make a hire, Mendoza, the manager, thought of Mahoney — for a bunch of reasons, foremost among them his ability to throw top-notch BP.
That is no small thing. Grooving practice pitches to big-leaguers is an actual skill, one Mendoza knew Mahoney had. When Mahoney was a young coach, he became a Tampa-based go-to thrower for the likes of Jeter, Rodriguez and other injured Yankees who were rehabbing at the spring training complex. Mendoza remembered that.
“That matters, especially at this level,” Mets hitting coach Jeremy Barnes said. “You got Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso and these guys. If you’re not good at that or that’s not your forte, it’s a thing. He’s been great — figuring out what guys want, how they want it. And his personality is great. He’s very warm, very engaging.”
Another reason Mendoza called Mahoney to gauge interest: his diverse skill set and background.
The Mets didn’t want a guy who would merely throw BP. They sought someone who could aid Barnes and fellow hitting coach Eric Chavez in making sure the hitting department runs smoothly.
Since Mahoney was a former player with coaching experience — and managerial experience, with the Johnson City Doughboys, a summer collegiate team — his resume looked great. Along with coaching assistant Rafael Fernandez, who is the Spanish-speaking and lefthanded version of Mahoney, Mahoney speaks the language of present-day baseball, knowledgeable about the data, video and other forms of information hitters use to prepare.
“It was a pretty good match for a position that is basically BP thrower but coaching assistant too,” Mendoza said. “He can help a lot of people.”
Mahoney spends much of any given game down the tunnel in the batting cage.
“We’re out here during the game, but there’s a whole world going on in the cage,” Barnes said.
If a player has a day off, he might spend time inside working on his swing, with Mahoney throwing to him and talking it through. If a player is getting ready to come off the bench for what Mendoza sometimes calls the biggest at-bat of the game, Mahoney is helping him warm up his body (with throws) and mind (with scouting reports on the pitcher he might face).
As Mahoney put it, his job is to assist in “making sure that everyone is getting what they need to have success.”
“It helps spread [responsibility] out across the board, and to have people that you trust, who know what they’re talking about and continuing the message and making sure that the message is unified is huge,” Barnes said. “And he throws great BP.”
Making it to the majors has been “everything I thought it would be and then some,” Mahoney said, even if returning home means being away from family. His “All-Star wife,” Kimberly, and their two kids, Kaiden and Kensington, mostly stay back in the Tampa Bay area, which is hard, he said.
But being in New York has its perks, including living near one brother in Manhattan and another in Rocky Point. He has made a couple of trips back to Miller Place to visit childhood best friends, now with families of their own. Catching glimpses of Mahoney in the Mets’ dugout on the broadcasts is mind-blowing for all involved.
“Not in a million years” did Mahoney think he’d end up here, he said. And he isn’t sure what will come next in his baseball career, but he’ll figure it out once he gets there. That is how he has gotten this far, all the way from Miller Place.
“I’m living proof that if you just work hard and be a good person, good things are going to happen,” Mahoney said. “Because you never know what’s going to happen. You just never know.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
