Trevor May Hasn’t Found His Grip Yet

Trevor May hasn’t had the start to the season the Mets have hoped for. May has allowed runs in four of his six outings and seen his ERA balloon to 8.53.

The righty setup man might be in danger of losing his role if he’s unable to get things together quickly.

May (1-0, 8.53) joined the Mets in 2021 and immediately slotted into an eighth-inning role. In 68 appearances last season, May had a 3.59 ERA, 1.261 WHIP and struck out 83 batters in 62 and 2/3 innings. May even finished 19 games when Edwin Diaz was unavailable, earning four saves in the process. Early struggles and health issues could now slot May down the reliever hierarchy.

May’s inauspicious start to the season began on Opening Day, allowing a home run and three hits to the Nationals. It continued four games later in Philadelphia when the Mets attempted to have May pitch multiple innings, something he never did in 2021. May left the outing with an injury but was called upon five days later in the eighth inning to keep a 3-0 deficit at that. May allowed one hit and struck out one.

May’s best outing of the season was against the Giants. He closed out game two of a doubleheader by not allowing a baserunner. May had put together back-to-back clean outings.

The trouble began again on April 22 in Arizona. The Mets tried to get May to pitch multiple innings again, but he allowed a two-run home run in the process. Then Monday versus the Cardinals, May allowed three hits, walked one, and two runs in a 0-0 game in the eighth inning.

May who was in the 90th or higher percentile last season in xwOBA, xBA, xOBP, K%, and xERA is now in the 14th, 7th, 22nd, 20th, and 14th, respectively.

It’s a small sample with May having thrown 115 pitches compared to the 1,117 he tossed in 2021.

Within that small simply there are trends that have emerged.

May’s spin rates are down across the board. Since last season he’s lost nearly 200 rotations on his slider, 100 rotations on his fastball, and 500 rotations on his changeup.

The shape of his changeup has shifted from 22 inches of drop to 31 inches. It’s not moving as much horizontally going from 10.5 inches of break to 7.7. It appears to be an entirely different grip than the one he’s used prior to 2021 with similar numbers recorded on Statcast back in spring training.

The results of May’s changeup shakeup have worked when looking at 2021 numbers. Batters are hitting .286 against it with an xBA of .200. It has a 25% K-rate and has put away batters 28.6% of the time. In 2021, hitters struck out 20.5% on the pitch but were only put away 16.7%.

So if it’s not the new changeup, where are May’s problems coming?

May only throws three pitches and his usual best pitch – the fastball – has been his worse. May throws his four-seamer half the time and batters are crushing it to a tune of a .375 batting average and .813 slugging percentage. They swing and miss just 9.7%. The expected stats aren’t any better with an xBA of .386 and xSLG of .801.

In 2021, batters hit May’s fastball at a .217 clip with .371 slugging. They swung and missed 33.2% of the time. Batters were expected to hit .179 and slug .353.

What’s different? May’s velocity is in line (96.5 vs. 96.1 mph). The fastball is also moving more (12.8 inches of drop and 8.7 inches of break vs. 11.6 inches of drop and 6.2 inches of break). The spin rate shouldn’t be overly significant but his per season percentile rank on fastball spin has fallen from 79th percentile to 53rd.

Could he not be locating pitches?

At the end of last season, May had a Location+ of 102.1. Location+ is a metric that determines the value of a pitch based only on its location at the plate. It’s a part of the Pitching+ model that attempts to predict essentially how “good” a pitcher is at pitching. Pitching+ looks at a pitcher’s arsenal through the lens of the physical properties of the pitch and its location at the plate. May had a 106.2 Pitching+ last season (100 is average).

Updated through April 20, when May had four appearances his Pitching+ this season is down to 104.2 yet his Location+ is at 102.9. Those numbers could be lower after repetitive outings allowing runs.

This has all been a long-winded way to say that May is pretty much doing the same thing as last year and his career. The only thing that’s severely different is his changeup and it’s an improvement on iterations in years past.

What’s going to be the key for May? Working with Jeremy Hefner and the pitching staff, along with one of the largest analytic teams in baseball to make adjustments to his repertoire. It’s even possible scout teams picked up on a tip by May and that’s why batters have had success against mostly similar pitches.

Until that can all be solved, the Mets best option is to move May out of the higher leverage spots and give those opportunities to Adam Ottavino or Drew Smith. Seth Lugo could be an option with him throwing his curveball harder than ever.

May hasn’t had an ERA over 4.00 since 2016. The likelihood is he regresses back toward his previous season numbers and this is a rough patch. It will be something to monitor for now but don’t be overly concerned.