A reliever with a 7.20 ERA usually spends the winter rewriting his mechanics and hoping someone remembers the good days. Ryan Helsley isn’t having that kind of offseason. Instead, he’s become one of the more curious free agents on the market, the kind who tests how much front offices believe in track record over recency. The New York Mets saw his worst stretch up close, but the rest of the league seems far more willing to bet that the pitcher they watched for years in St. Louis is still in there.
A Tale of Two Seasons
Helsley arrived in Queens last summer with a reputation built on power and consistency. His 3.00 ERA in 36 innings with the St. Louis Cardinals looked like exactly the kind of reinforcement the Mets bullpen needed. On paper, it was one of those deadline moves that didn’t require much dreaming. The guy threw hard, missed bats, and had been successful for a long time. Simple enough.
Then the outings unraveled. Pitch-tipping concerns surfaced, his walk rate shot to 11.6 percent, and balls left the yard at a rate he had never experienced. The 7.20 ERA he posted in 20 innings for the Mets wasn’t just bad; it was destabilizing. He admitted later it was the hardest stretch of his big-league life, and you could see the weight of it in the way he attacked hitters. Confidence wavered. Stuff played down. Nothing synced.
Yet baseball is a sport where the full résumé matters more than a rough month, and Helsley’s résumé remains substantial.
Why So Many Teams Still Want Him
A 2.96 career ERA and 105 saves don’t disappear because of a bad chapter. That’s the argument teams are making, and roughly 15 of them have already checked in, per The Athletic’s Katie Woo. The Mets aren’t among them, which is understandable given how sour the fit turned. But their absence doesn’t say anything about the rest of the league’s appetite.
What makes the interest more intriguing is the split vision regarding his future role. Some clubs view him strictly as the elite reliever he used to be, the guy who could lock down the ninth and shorten a game. Others see something different. They see the possibility of a rotation piece, maybe even the kind of late-career pivot Clay Holmes managed with surprising ease.
The idea isn’t random. Helsley carries a starter’s mindset. His pitch mix is deeper than the typical late-inning arm. And he believes in it. He told Woo that he still thinks he can take the ball every fifth day, that he has more to give, and that the final three outs aren’t the only place where he can impact a game.
Who’s Considering the Experiment
The Detroit Tigers are among the clubs most seriously exploring the starter route, while St. Louis and the Chicago Cubs have also checked in. That’s a wide enough range of organizations to suggest the idea isn’t a fad. Teams seem to be looking at Helsley’s velocity, athleticism, and durability and imagining a different version of his career.
It’s a gamble, sure. A transition like this requires patience, creativity, and plenty of trial and error. But pitching development has shifted so dramatically in recent years that teams no longer shy away from unconventional reinventions. Sometimes the best version of a pitcher is the one you haven’t seen yet.
What the Mets Can Take From This
From a New York Mets standpoint, the whole situation serves as a small reminder: bullpen volatility cuts both ways. A move that looked sharp at the deadline turned disastrous, yet the same pitcher is now one of the more sought-after arms in free agency. The Mets aren’t likely to jump back in, but that doesn’t mean they misread the talent. They just caught him during the wrong twenty innings of his career.
Maybe a change of role unlocks something. Maybe a fresh environment gets him back to the pitcher he was for years. Either way, Helsley is going to get another chance.
The league clearly sees it. Now the question is whether the next chapter looks more like St. Louis or Queens.
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