New York Mets veteran starting pitcher Tylor Megill has had a rocky 2024 MLB season thus far, but upon returning to the mound after spending nearly one month in the minor leagues, the 6-foot-7 righty knows how he can turn things around in the second half of the season.
Per Bill Ladson of MLB.com, Megill had this to say following the six innings he tossed in the Mets’ 4-0 loss to the Atlanta Braves on Saturday, July 27:
“I need to get ahead with the heater, use sliders, and everything opens up if I’m ahead. I thought I did that really well today,” Megill said. “Later in the game, I was getting behind with the sinker, but I managed to get back into [good counts]. Overall, I didn’t think it was terrible. You just tip your cap on the home runs. I haven’t gone into the seventh for a while. The majority [of games have been] five innings or even less.”
Mets’ Tylor Megill wants to establish his favored pitches earlier in games
Megill allowed four earned runs, three of which were home runs, in his return against Atlanta. The California native fell victim to the same types of pitfalls that earned him a demotion after eight starts through June 29.
As he attested to, the 29-year-old’s four-seamer and slider have been two of his three go-to pitches on the campaign. He’s thrown his fastball 50 percent of the time and his slider 11.3 percent of the time he’s stepped onto the mound.
Megill has found success with both pitches, holding opposing batters to sub-.250 batting averages with each. Averaging 95.6 mph on his four-seamer, Megill is able to reach a high velocity while finding the strike zone, which has helped him retire 17 batters in that department. He throws an even distribution against both right and left-handed hitters, whereas he throws nearly three times as many sliders to righties than lefties.
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Megill has another pitch in his arsenal that could help him overcome 2024 woes
The California native also ought to up his curveball output as it has yielded positive results for him on the campaign. That pitch has generated the highest PutAway percentage (40 percent) for him as well as the lowest batting average (.091) and slug percentage (.182) in his entire arsenal.
Megill is out to entrench himself in the Mets’ starting rotation once more and will need to implement his self-assessment into his repertoire and keep his earned runs down to avoid letting games get out of hand and his ERA getting inflated.
The Mets have given him another shot to right the ship and so far there have been negatives that have come with the positives. Megill will look to be sharper in his next start which will likely come in the Mets’ three-game series against the Los Angeles Angels starting on Friday, Aug. 2.
