Devin Williams made a key mechanical adjustment late in April — after reviewing video with quality control coach Danny Barnes following an April 23 outing, he raised the starting position of his hands — and the results have been immediate.
The right-hander has thrown 9 2/3 scoreless innings since the change, allowing two hits, two walks and recording 12 strikeouts. He secured a save in the Mets' 2-1 win over the Washington Nationals on Thursday, lowering his ERA to 4.32 when Keibert Ruiz grounded out on Williams' first-pitch changeup to end the inning.
The numbers behind the turn are striking. One month earlier Williams carried a 10.29 ERA and had allowed runs in four straight games; April had shown an 8.00 ERA in his early work with the team. Last season, after lowering his hand position with the New York Yankees to combat tipping, he posted a 4.79 ERA in 62 innings, a change that Williams later said had felt unnatural.
Williams described the recent move in blunt terms: "That is what is most comfortable for me." He added, "Basically, it all came down to where I was starting my hands." Barnes, who led the video review, praised Williams' attention to detail: "He is extremely sharp, and he’s one of the smarter players I’ve been around. He picks up on everything. He is on everything. It’s really impressive. When I say he’s on things, it’s more so than any player I’ve seen come through here."
The club's biomechanics assessment backed the eyeball test. Mets senior performance scientist Joel Greenshields confirmed the biomechanical findings from the video review, and the pitch-level data show measurable improvement: Williams increased his changeup spin rate from 2504 rotations per minute to 2638, and his changeup whiff rate jumped from 35.7% to 51.4%. His induced vertical break on the changeup shifted from 0.1 inches to -1.3 inches in the reported analysis, and he averaged -2.5 inches of induced vertical break in his most recent two appearances. Williams' four-seam fastball whiff rate rose to 40.7% from 34.2% after the meeting.
After the initial review with Barnes, Williams met with pitching coach Justin Willard, assistant pitching coach Daniel McKinney and bullpen coach Jose Rosado to integrate the adjustment into his routine. The result has been a steadier late inning presence: in May, Williams and Luke Weaver combined for 17 scoreless innings and together recorded five saves and four holds.
The change is particularly consequential because Williams arrived in New York as the Mets' closer on a three-year, $51 million deal, replacing Edwin Díaz, and his early struggles included blowing a save in the middle of a 12-game losing streak. Before signing, Williams had been one of the game's most dominant relievers with a 1.83 ERA over six seasons in Milwaukee and 235 2/3 innings of work with a 1.02 WHIP at his peak.
The tension in Williams' turnaround has been straightforward: a delivery tweak intended to mask tipping last season made him uncomfortable and coincided with a drop in effectiveness; reverting the starting hand position restored feel and improved measurable outcomes. The judgment the facts support is clear — the hand-position reset, identified in video, reinforced in coaching meetings and confirmed biomechanically, returned swing-and-miss and tightened his changeup enough to revive his late-inning role.
For Williams, the adjustment brought him back toward a setup he trusts and a set of results that look like the player the Mets paid to be their closer: quieter counts, more whiffs and the ability to close out a one-run game with a first-pitch changeup. Whether the stretch continues will be watched closely, but the immediate evidence is that a small, comfort-driven change remade his season.
