Mets reliever, Hansel Robles has been on quite the streak lately. He has had 14 straight scoreless innings dating back to April 12th. 

The last time Hansel Robles gave up a run for the Mets: Yoenis Cespedes had a healthy hamstring, Noah Syndergaard looked like a CY Young candidate, Jay Bruce was just starting to make Mets fans love him, and Michael Conforto was riding the bench.

His season started out shaky, but it all changed with a gutsy performance he had against the Marlins in that 16 inning marathon. Robles had worked three days in a row at that time, including two multiple inning appearances and was running on fumes in that game. Despite all that, Robles took the ball and delivered for the Mets.

Robles throughout his career has been phenomenal against lefties. This year, lefties are slashing a meager .050/.217/.158 against him. To put this into perspective, lefties are slashing .103/.160/.103 off Jerry Blevins this year. This is not just a fluke for Robles, lefties are slashing .161/.255/.303 against him for his career. While Terry Collins may have his hesitations about using Robles against Bryce Harper, he will hopefully let him face more lefties rather than use Blevins and Josh Edgin on an everyday basis.  

Since coming up in 2015, Robles has always been projected to have a breakout year due to his electric arsenal. One could argue he has the best stuff in the Mets bullpen. While has certainly had his moments the last few seasons, he has never seemed to put it together. Perhaps he finally he has this year judging by his batted balls.  

Last year, Robles had the highest line drive rate against him in all of baseball, the fifth lowest ground ball rate, and the 12th highest hard hit rate. To sum it up, he had a lot of hard hit balls that were not ground balls.

This year has been much different for Hansel, his ground ball rate jumped from 30.1% to 47.7%. His fly ball rate in 2015 and 2016 were 49.3% and 41.3% respectively, this year it is 29.5%. His line drive rate dropped from 28.6% last year to 22.7% this season. His soft contact rate in 2016 was 19.6% and this year 28.9%. There are a lot of things to like about Robles and his change in approach this year. These stats hopefully show his recent success was not just the benefit of luck.

The Mets bullpen, yesterday’s ninth inning aside, has been fairly good as of late. As a whole, the bullpen has pitched to a 1.09 ERA the last week, good for second baseball behind. Hansel Robles is a big reason for that and his role will only continue to increase given the way he is pitching.