Former Met Aaron Heilman looks forward to new start with Mariners

No place in sports is quite like New York. It can be a geographical gulag.

New York expects perfection and pennants and championship parades. It inflates heroes like the floats at a Macy's Parade. But it also tears down everyone who doesn't live up to its grandiose expectations.

The tabloids chew on athletes like dogs devouring sirloin. Blow a save, for instance, and they can blow you up in one sarcastic headline.

Athletes in New York can soar so high they barely can see the ground and they can crash so quickly they become part of the ground.

New York is tough and unyielding and demanding as a drill sergeant. It can exalt an athlete and it can destroy one. It can celebrate athletes, or it can suffocate them.

For the past couple of seasons at Shea Stadium, setup man Aaron Heilman has been the focus of all the anger and disappointment of Mets fans. He sometimes has been treated as if he were solely to blame for every September swoon.

In 2008, as the Mets blew another lead in another National League East playoff race, Heilman was 3-8 with a 5.21 earned-run average.

He was torn apart by the talk shows, blasted by bloggers and taunted by the tabloids.

A bright, articulate man, he heard the hoots and hollers and hate, and all of it had to have an effect on him.

But now Heilman has escaped the city. He has been given a second chance and a transcontinental change of scenery with the Mariners. And his arrival just might be the sleeper deal of the offseason. His could become one of the most intriguing stories of 2009.

"The pressures are tough enough just playing in the big leagues," Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu said at Sunday's frigid Fan Fest inside Safeco Field. "If you get off to a bad start, well I haven't met a player alive who doesn't care about giving back, or that doesn't care about doing well. So when you get into an environment that is so negative, sometimes it's hard to overcome that and a change of scenery helps a lot."

Heilman, 30, part of the trade that dealt J.J. Putz to the Mets, is a sleeping giant. There are statistics that argue he is capable of, even itching for, a breakthrough season.

Over the past four years, for instance, he has averaged 8.1 strikeouts per nine innings. And, last June, he briefly silenced the jeers. He struck out 14 in 14 innings that month and had a 0.64 earned-run average.

Heilman is durable. He has one of the five best arms on the Mariners. He is a playoff-experienced pitcher, who gives you the impression the best is yet to come.

A philosophy major from Notre Dame, Heilman waxes, well, philosophic about his six seasons in New York.

"Playing in New York is the only existence I've known and I think you get used to it," Heilman said, standing by a heater Sunday in the Mariners dugout. "You learn to accept the fact that you are dealing with a very passionate, very knowledgeable fan base.

"New York's one of those markets where unless you win the World Series, it's not a good year. There's a lot of competition in New York from all sides, whether it's the Mets against the Yankees or whether it's between the newspapers."

Seattle isn't Mayberry. Baseball fans here are angry about last season's 101 losses, but they are more forgiving and much more encouraging.

"I think a change of scenery can be good," Heilman said. "It depends on how you look at it. I certainly didn't look at it as I really wanted to get out of New York. I was kind of looking forward to going back and showing that last season was an aberration and to get back to what I normally can do.

"Certainly I would have liked to have given them a better show last year, because they are great fans, but I don't feel like I have anything to prove to them or anyone else. I don't feel a need to put an end to the naysayers."

A reliever most of his career, Heilman has made it clear he wants to be a full-time, big-league starter.

And because of the extended spring training, necessitated by the World Baseball Classic, Wakamatsu will have plenty of time to sort his starting staff. He can use an eight-pitcher rotation — Felix Hernandez, Erik Bedard, Carlos Silva, Ryan Rowland-Smith, Jarrod Washburn, Miguel Batista, Brandon Morrow, Heilman in his spring search for five starters.

"I certainly don't think I'll ever give up that desire to be a starter," Heilman said. "In a perfect world I'd be a starter. It's the thing I've always been the most comfortable with."

Wakamatsu's question is whether Heilman, who throws a low-90s fastball to complement his splitter, has enough pitches to be a starter.

"If I thought I'd only be a mediocre starter, then maybe I wouldn't feel as strongly as I do," Heilman said.

Heilman can pitch. And away from the cacophony of New York, either in the rotation, or in the 'pen, he can find himself in Seattle.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com