NY Mets coach can live up to his reputation if he fixes this Ryan Helsley flaw

Ryan Helsley is having a good year but not necessarily one projecting him to finish with Cy Young votes like he did last year. The overall numbers are good. The 3.00 ERA is a little high for a closer. He won’t have that role with the New York Mets except on days when maybe he is available, Edwin Diaz isn’t, and the team is trying to get 3 outs in the ninth.

Helsley has gotten hit hard this season. He is in the bottom 6% of hard-hit rate. The problem has been one pitch in particular.

Although favoring his slider more than anything else, his second pitch, his fastball, hasn’t lived up to its speed. Averaging 99.3 mph, batters are clobbering it with a .406 batting average against. Meanwhile, his slider has been one of the best pitches in the game.

Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner has some work to make Ryan Helsley even better

If only it was as simple as Helsley dropping his slider altogether. Statistically, it would make sense. Hitters are batting .092 against his slider. It has a 45.6% whiff rate. It’s slightly better than Diaz.

Helsley and Diaz have that similarity of being fastball and slider reliant. Diaz has favored his fastball more in the last two seasons while in his elite 2022 season it was flipped. He threw his slider 150 more times than his fastball.

There never was a point in Diaz’s time with the Mets when one particular pitch was getting such outrageously poor results. His slider was the weaker pitch in 2019 when fans had already seen enough. Things change. Pitchers evolve. Jeremy Hefner has his work cut out for him to figure out the best way to approach Helsley’s pitch selection.

Is it a matter of adjusting what he throws or how he does it? This is the second straight year of Helsley’s fastball not being so effective. Batters hit .276 against it last year versus .171 when they saw his slider.

Hefner has a superb reputation for his work with multiple pitchers past and present. Helsley comes with a lot of success, but also a clear hitch in his giddyup.