With health and hop on his fastball, Helsley gets grip on elevated role in Cardinals bullpen

Enter Ryan Helsley.

With the stress reaction in his elbow addressed and problematic knee repaired, Helsley has emerged as the right-handed setup man and closer-in-waiting the Cardinals were not sure they had entering spring training. Helsley has struck out eight and walked none in four scoreless innings of relief, and with a healthy knee to plant as he delivers a pitch he’s reclaimed crisper command of his fastball and cutter. With lefty Genesis Cabrera and closer Giovanny Gallegos, Helsley is one of the three relievers manager Oliver Marmol sees as his high-leverage preferences, and Helsley’s emergence played a role in making Hicks’ first career major league start Thursday possible.

“When you think about how to get to our backend, that’s the spot — Helsley seventh inning, Helsley/Hicks in a traditional sense, you would have used them,” Marmol said. “Does it make it easier that he stepped up to not have to use Hicks there and we can actually toy with him starting? No doubt.”

Helsley, 27, missed the final month of this past season due to small fractures and bone weakness in his right elbow that showed up on a deep scan of the joint. He was prescribed six to eight weeks without throwing and medication to help improve his bone density, he said. The downtime to address his elbow gave him reason to repair another lingering issue: the knee.

Since 2020, the right-hander had some soreness in the knee, and it returned during spring training in 2021. He pitched through it, but when it would bend, a piece of cartilage would catch like a baseball card in a bicycle spoke and cause pain.

Helsley wonders if he adjusted his mechanics to avoid that pain, leaving the elbow vulnerable and costing him command at times.

No longer.

“I can kind of pitch more freely out there,” Helsley said. “I don’t have to really worry about my knee holding up or something giving out.”

The results go beyond his pitching line. Helsley has been able to reconnect with his 100-mph fastball and is up from a 97.5-mph average last year to 98.8 mph early this year. He plays off that with a cutter around 90 mph and a curveball that can plunge at 79 mph. That gives him three pitches at three significantly different speeds, and for added movement he moves his thumb on the ball to loosen his cutter into a slider.

That slider was the 3-1 pitch in Milwaukee this past Saturday that setup a 101-mph fastball for a pivotal strikeout in the Cardinals’ win. That assignment revealed the role Marmol has in mind for Helsley, and how the bullpen is adjusting as a result.

“I think we’re seeing a fully healthy, confident Helsley,” Marmol said. He added: “When you’re seeing 100 with off-speed pitches for strikes, he’s going to be a huge part of this bullpen.”

It’s Yadi & Yogi

A catcher who grew in St. Louis and another who starred there are the only catchers in major league history to have caught at least 150 shutouts. With Wednesday’s shutout in Miami, Yadier Molina authored his 150th to join Hall of Famer and The Hill great Yogi Berra as the top two. Berra caught 173 shutouts in his career (1946-65). The stat counts only shutouts a catcher started and finished — regardless of how many pitchers it took to zero-out the box score.

“What Yadier brings? You know he’s going to call a good game. You know he’s prepared, which is a huge part of it,” veteran Adam Wainwright said. “There’s a reason behind every pitch he’s calling. He sees the hitter on a deeper level than most anybody else. It’s also blocking balls, throwing everybody out, simplifying it all for the pitcher so that all he has to do is go out there and execute a pitch.”

The Cardinals’ 2-0 victory Wednesday was a catching clinic featuring two Gold Glove winners. Molina, a nine-time winner, guided four different style pitchers through nine scoreless and Miami’s Jacob Stallings, the 2021 winner, showed why he’s a virtuoso in pitch framing, especially along the strike zones lower edge.

Asked if Molina relishes such matchups, Marmol smiled.

“If there’s a competition to be had, he’s in,” the manager said.

A shift to shifting

The Cardinals have made a subtle adjustment to how they shift defensively so that it’s not as extreme for specific hitters in specific counts. Against the Pirates’ Yoshi Tsutsugo, a left-handed batter, the Cardinals had three infielders on the right-field side of second base. But when the count got to two strikes, they stepped closer to playing Tsutsugo straight. They did a similar move with Milwaukee left-handed hitter Christian Yelich.

It all depends on how likely the hitter is to change from being pull dominant with the count in his favor to putting the ball in play with two strikes.

The change doesn’t tip what pitch is coming because it’s how the hitter adjusts.

“More player-specific,” Marmol explained. “You’ll see it time to time. Where you’ll see once you get to two strikes you can go full shift, there are certain guys where they’ll change their approach, let the ball go deeper. They don’t want to get beat off speed out in front so you beat them with fastballs late. They’ll still shoot it the other way. It’s still a strong pull, but not a shift.”

Red alert

The divesting of talent from a lapsed contender and an early road swing out west has led to a foul start for Cincinnati. As they ready to host the Cardinals for the first time this season, the Reds have dropped nine consecutive games, including seven straight on a West Coast road trip, and have gone 12 days without holding a lead. The Reds have allowed twice as many runs as they’ve scored this season, 74 to 37, and during this nine-game tumble hit .167. In their last 282 at-bats as a team, the Reds have more strikeouts (90) than total bases (79).

Extra bases

The foul ball that ricocheted back and struck Lars Nootbaar in the left ear Wednesday night left a cut that remained bandaged Thursday, but he did not require stitches, he said. … Former Cardinals slugger Matt Adams signed a contract Thursday with the Kansas City Monarchs, a club in the independent American Association that is affiliated with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. … Nolan Arenado’s two-run homer Wednesday was the first by a Cardinal in the ninth inning of a scoreless game on the road since Tom Pagnozzi’s in San Diego on July 8, 1992, according to historian Tom Orf.