How a Harvard Engineer Became a Mets Pitcher: The Ascent of Truman Pauley

On a Mother’s Day afternoon at just eight years old, junior Truman Pauley took the mound for the first time — and promptly walked five straight batters.

When the coach offered to pull him, Pauley firmly shook his head.

“No,” he told him, his father Matthew Pauley recalled. “I’ve got to figure it out.”

He did — escaping the inning and planting the stubborn resolve that would carry him from Pacific Palisades PONY baseball all the way to Harvard, and this July, to the New York Mets as a 12th-round draft pick. Pauley was drafted to the big leagues alongside fellow pitching teammate and senior Callan Fang, who is heading to the Minnesota Twins.

For Truman, the moment was surreal.

“It’s just been a dream of mine since I was a little kid,” he said. “It was an incredible feeling. Just a lot of emotions hit me all at once.”

While Harvard students return to Cambridge for the start of the year, Pauley is still tossing filthy pitches for the Mets’ Single-A Affiliate in Port St. Lucie, Florida and will resume his studies in two weeks. His contract is valued at nearly $400,000.

By age 10, Pauley was throwing complete games in all-star tournaments. At 12, he led his team to the brink of the PONY World Series. And in those years, he became more than just an athlete with a strong arm, but an engineer of the game whose focus was always on developing new, unhittable pitches to best his opponents.

His signature “gyro slider” — a hard, downward-breaking pitch — became his weapon of choice.

“His pitching coach said it was one of the filthiest pitches he’d ever seen,” Matthew Pauley said.

Though larger baseball programs beckoned, Truman Pauley chose Harvard. The combination of rigorous academics, a family legacy — his great-grandfather was a catcher for the Crimson— and the culture built by head coach Bill Decker sealed the decision.

“He wanted a Harvard degree,” Matthew Pauley said. “That was super important for him and for us.”

“Harvard baseball has been a huge game changer for my path, and obviously school is something I value a lot,” Truman Pauley said.

In a statement, Coach Bill Decker celebrated Fang and Pauley’s contributions to the Crimson — and said he was looking forward to following their journeys beyond O’Donnell Field.

“They have worked extremely hard to be in this position, and at the same time, have been diligent as student-athletes at Harvard,” Decker wrote. “Replacing them next year will be challenging as it’s difficult to lose your top two arms — a combined 20 starts, 120 plus innings, and two great leaders, but we will survive.”

Even now, with pro ball underway, he plans to return to Cambridge. At Harvard, he studies mechanical engineering, though he may switch to physics to balance coursework with baseball. Either way, he remains committed to completing his degree in fall semesters, even if professional baseball interrupts his timeline.

“There are so many guys from Harvard baseball who are playing pro baseball right now, and all of us go back to school and finish our degree,” Pauley said. “I’ll be back in the fall — I’ll just be a couple of weeks late.”

This past spring, the Crimson’s campaign started dismally at 4–21, plagued by narrow losses against powerhouse non-conference opponents. But Pauley’s emergence on the mound keyed a midseason surge that propelled the Crimson into the Ivy League Tournament.

The junior led the Ivy League in strikeouts (91) and opponents’ batting average (.171), while ranking third nationally in hits allowed per nine innings (5.37). On Apr. 11 against Princeton, he carried a historic no-hitter into the ninth, striking out 12 before a double broke it up. The performance earned him Ivy League Pitcher of the Week honors and sparked Harvard’s turnaround.

In the postseason, Truman Pauley delivered his defining moment: a complete-game gem against Columbia in which he struck out a tournament-record 13 batters and allowed just one unearned run. His composure, his father says, set him apart.

“It’s his gift,” Matthew Pauley said. “The ability to shake off a bad pitch and focus on the next one. That mound presence is rare.”

Pauley’s dominance set the stage for what was otherwise a broader renaissance for Harvard baseball. The Crimson, once mired in the Ivy cellar, rallied behind its ace to clinch a tournament berth, proving that the program could compete with the conference’s best.

His performance also placed him among a growing cohort of Harvard players drafted in recent years — a sign of the program’s rising national profile.

On draft night, Truman holed up in a hotel room in Orleans to avoid the noise of his summer-league host family’s house. His parents and younger brother tuned in from Los Angeles, where the family lives, and connected by FaceTime.

“I didn’t know up until draft day whether I was going to choose to go back to school or sign with a team,” he said. “But it just felt like the right opportunity for me and my family. I was immediately excited to start a new kind of path.”

Soon after, he reported to Port St. Lucie to join the Mets’ Single-A affiliate.

“It’s the same game at every level — the field feels the same,” he said. “It’s just the amount of time you put into everything is higher. More weight training, more conditioning. Other than that, the game doesn’t really change.”

For Matthey Pauley, a lifelong Dodgers fan, celebrating in Mets gear required adjustment.

“It was pretty funny,” he admitted. “It’s going to be hard for me to wear blue and orange.”

As for Truman Pauley, he has already come around.

“I paid more attention to the Dodgers growing up, but I never had anything against the Mets,” he said. “I’ve grown to love them really quickly.”

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.

—Staff writer Saketh Sundar can be reached at saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @saketh_sundar.