Jerome Williams performed just about any task a pitcher can be asked to handle in 11 big league seasons on eight teams and nearly as many at other levels of professional baseball.

Now he will be doing the asking.

“So far so good,” Williams, 37, recently said from spring training in Port St. Lucie, Fla.. He was hired in the offseason as the pitching coach for Kingsport, the Mets’ team in the Appalachian League.

Since the rookie league doesn’t start until June, the Giants’ supplemental first-round pick out of Waipahu in 1999 has plenty of time to work on the finer points of teaching pitchers. But he said he’s had a head start.

“It’s my first year, but I’ve been doing it the last three years while playing,” Williams said.

He threw his last pitch in the majors in 2016, for the St. Louis Cardinals. But he kept going in the Mexican League until last season.

“After I got released from there, I told myself if Mexico doesn’t want to re-sign me no one will,” Williams said. “So I just decided to try another way to stay in baseball. I’m happy to have an opportunity.”

Williams shopped himself at the winter meetings.

“When I first did all my interviews and they saw my resume, the first thing they asked is, ‘You’ve been through a lot in your career. Why do you want to stay in baseball?’” Williams said.

The question is the answer. It’s hard to find a career with as many ups and downs as Williams has enjoyed and endured over the course of 20 years.

“I pretty much did everything, everywhere,” he said. “At 17, I was a first-round draft pick. Four years later I’m in a major league rotation, and at age 25 I’m in indy ball. For one thing, baseball is all I know. But I know it pretty thoroughly.”

Williams went from phenom to near wash-out but rebounded to become a valuable veteran who could go from starting to long or short relief, often on short rest.

A powerful fastball clocked regularly well over 90 mph and control got him to the San Francisco rotation and starting a postseason game in 2003. Injuries, poor conditioning and overconfidence sent him plummeting to baseball’s scrapheap as fast as he’d climbed, Williams said.

As a rookie, Williams went 7-5 in 21 starts with a 3.30 ERA. But he allowed nearly a run more per nine innings in 2004, and was 0-2 with a 6.48 ERA when the Giants traded him to the Cubs in 2005. The change of scenery to a staff that included Greg Maddux seemed to help at first, but Williams pitched poorly in 2006, and again in six starts with Washington in ’07.

By 2008 his stock had crashed as hard as Wall Street did that year, and Williams pitched for anyone who would let him.

And anywhere.

His bush league stops included the Long Beach (Calif.) Armada of the Golden Baseball League, Class AAA for the A’s and winter ball in Puerto Rico. With no takers in American baseball, in 2010 he ended up with the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions in Taiwan.

Well, better to be pitching for a team sponsored by a convenience store than counting out change behind the counter of one, he figured.

“I wasn’t ready for a regular job. My 9-to-5 had always been 12-to-12,” Williams said. “At that time, I couldn’t quit. I was still young. I didn’t want to put any thoughts on my kids that it’s OK to be mediocre.”

Williams credits Taiwan with saving his career. Throwing 200 pitches in bullpen sessions between starts was common and the extra mound work (as well as losing 30 pounds he’d gained since his rookie season) got him back on track.

A year later he was back in the majors, with the Angels. That’s where he became a swingman, starting some games and finishing others as a long reliever. In 2012, he posted a statistical oddity reflecting his versatility: Both a shutout and a save were among his 32 appearances.

In 2014, Williams entered the record book for accomplishing a first in the majors. He beat the same team (Oakland) while pitching for three different teams (Houston, Texas and Philadelphia) in the same season.

After another year with the Phillies, Williams finished his MLB career with the Cardinals in 2016. That’s when he discovered he enjoyed coaching enough to seriously consider it as a job.

Williams mentored Sam Tuivailala, who was drafted as a shortstop and was in his fourth year of converting to a pro pitcher when they were in the Cardinals bullpen together.

“He asked if I could help him with his two-seamer. When he gave me credit for it later, people were saying, ‘He helped you, really?’ But the way I see it, the ones who want the help, I give them the help,” Williams said. “You can tell, they gravitate to the older players. Plus, he was a teammate and a fellow Polynesian (Williams is part-Hawaiian, Tuivailala is part-Tongan). Now we have another bond because he tore his Achilles and I had one, so he asked me about rehab.”

As Williams talked about his relationship with Tuivailala, he said it reminded him of a visit he made to a Waipahu baseball practice in 2001, shortly after his mother, Deborah, died of breast cancer.

“It didn’t matter if it was because of my mom passing away or just going home to go home,” Williams said. “It was instilled by my parents that if you can help someone, help them. Their success will be yours. Not necessarily in baseball, but those Waipahu kids became successful because people showed they cared about them.”