Here's how Weaver turned his season around in May

To start this season, Luke Weaver wasn’t looking to be perfect. However, every pitch the Mets were making was under the microscope after they lost 12 in a row from April 8-21 before losing five of six from April 24-30.

“At the end of the day, this pursuit of perfection is an ultimate pressurized failure mindset,” said Weaver, after he allowed two runs and got the loss in New York’s 5-4 defeat vs. Washington to end April. “Everybody wants to be the hero because we care and we want to win really, really bad. I just don't think success lives in that realm. It truly doesn't.

“The freedom with which we play day to day is kind of being suffocated a little bit. I want to do my job, it's that simple -- there's moments that feel really close, and then there's mistakes that magnify our situation. I sit there and feel the weight of the world, like I let the team down.”

Through that April 30 outing, Weaver -- who signed a two-year contract with the Mets worth $22 million this past offseason -- had a 6.00 ERA in 12 games. While he did have some bad luck to start the season, he still had a 4.93 FIP and an expected ERA (xERA) of 5.14, both well above league average.

Since that outing and making those comments, though, Weaver has been one of the most dominant relievers in baseball.

Since May 1, Weaver has not allowed a run (let alone an earned run) in 18 appearances (20 innings). That makes him the only pitcher to have pitched in 10 or more innings in that span without a run allowed. Over that time, he also has a 1.34 FIP and a 1.94 xERA. Entering play Friday, those ranked sixth- and 12th-best among all pitchers with 10 or more innings in that span.

Weaver hasn’t even allowed an extra-base hit since April, as all 10 hits have been singles.

Two of the biggest reasons for this recent success have been increased fastball velocity and better location on his changeup.

Last season when Weaver was with the Yankees, he averaged 95.1 mph on his four-seam fastball. It was a pitch that batters hit .219 against with a .424 slugging percentage.

From the start of this season through the end of April, his average four-seam velocity dipped to 94.4 mph (down 0.7 mph from last season). In May, though, Weaver found his fastball velocity again. The four-seam velocity went up to 95.5 mph, and in June, he has averaged 96.3 mph for a gain of nearly 2 mph since April.

That has helped him rack up more strikeouts. Since May 1, the pitch has a 36.1 percent K rate, which is nearly double that of the 20.8 percent K rate he had on the pitch the first month-plus of the season.

With his changeup, it was one of the most effective pitches in baseball last year. Batters hit .129 off it with a .257 slugging percentage. Its 43.9 percent whiff rate was tied for 29th-highest among the 792 pitch types thrown at least 300 times across MLB last season.

His pitch location was nearly immaculate all season, as it almost always ran down and in against right-handed hitters or down and away to left-handers.

Before May, Weaver’s changeup location wasn’t bad, per se, but as you can see, he did have a fair amount of changeups leak middle-middle in the zone:

As a result, batters were hitting .263 on the pitch, which was more than double from where it was last season. It was also a changeup that leaked out over the plate that cost Weaver and the Mets on April 30, when CJ Abrams’ two-run homer gave the Nats the lead in the 8th inning.

Since the start of May, the changeup has been even more dominant for Weaver. Batters are hitting .097 (3-for-33) on the changeup. The location speaks for itself:

Perfection? Perhaps not. But Weaver’s fastball-changeup has been darn close to that in the last six weeks.

And if his stuff can be anything like it has been going forward, he will be a valuable commodity in the bullpen, whether it’s for the Mets or another team via trade before the Deadline on Aug. 3.