Have the Cincinnati Reds fixed Luis Mey?

Over the weekend the Cincinnati Reds broadcast had a segment about the new mechanics for right-handed reliever Luis Mey. They talked about how he made the change and how well he’s been pitching since.

No one has ever doubted that Luis Mey had the stuff. He’s got a fastball that’s hit 103 MPH that moves more than most guys throwing 91 MPH fastballs have their #1 move. His slider’s pretty good, too. The thing that’s always held Mey back has been his control. He just has never been able to consistently throw strikes over a long period of time. If you’ve watched enough Reds games over the last two seasons you’ve seen that, yourself. He’s pitched 36.1 innings for Cincinnati and has 27 walks and he’s hit four batters.

Earlier this season he had made seven appearances over the course of a few short call ups and the results simply weren’t good. He allowed seven runs in 8.2 innings, walked 10 batters and hit three others. While that’s worse than you would expect from Mey, it wasn’t entirely outside of the expectation, either. That’s kind of who he has been for his minor league career, too. A guy with elite level stuff and long periods of time where he just couldn’t throw the ball in the strikezone with any sort of consistency.

Cincinnati had Mey back in Triple-A after his appearance on June 5th and he spent two months straight with Louisville. The results were a mixed bag during that time. His ERA was 3.63 in that time, which is plenty fine. But he threw 22.1 innings while allowing 21 hits, walking 21 batters, and hitting three others. That’s a WHIP of 1.88 and we need to remember that WHIP doesn’t include those three hit batters.

Still, needing a pitcher to just be capable of throwing some innings the Reds called Luis Mey back up and he’s pitched in four games over the last eight days. He hasn’t walked anyone. He hasn’t hit anyone. And he hasn’t given up a run while throwing 6.2 innings and striking out 10 of the 23 batters he’s faced. Mey has looked filthy. But he always looks filthy when the catch actually gets a chance to catch the ball.

The broadcast, rightfully so, was pointing out his success of late. But where things get a bit weird is the story they appear to be trying to sell. That there was some mechanical change that led to this breakthrough for Mey.

And it’s sort of true, but also not true at all. The broadcast showed a side by side view of Mey pitching earlier this year and pitching now. The earlier clip shows him with a high leg lift in his windup and the newer mechanics is a low, to almost no leg lift and just a stride forward. When you only see those two clips it paints a picture that things are different, that this is new.

It’s not.

Below is two video clips of Luis Mey pitching in 2026 for the Cincinnati Reds. One is from this weekend. The other is from April.

They look awfully similar, huh?

So you are probably asking yourself what’s going on here and where the high leg lift clip came from that was shown on the broadcast and talked about as something that has unlocked Luis Mey. When no one was on base against Mey in the past he did indeed employ that high leg lift, but once runners got on he used this – likely as a way to be quicker to the plate and give his catcher a better chance to help control the run game.

So technically there has been a change, but is it really a change? The mechanics aren’t new to him. In 2026 he’s pitched to more batters with runners on base than he has with them empty.

That brings us to the next question, which should be does he pitch better with runners on versus when no one is on?

In 2026 the answer to that is yes. But maybe no. Let’s take a look. The numbers below are only for the 2026 season and they include his time pitching in both Triple-A and MLB.

Hitters are doing better against him when the bases are empty, which is where the high leg lift had been utilized. For the most part it comes down to the fact that they’ve hit for more power and had a few more hits fall in on contact (BABIP is 28 points higher when the bases are empty this season for Mey). But his walk rate on the season is identical regardless of the two situations and his strikeout rate is quite high in both situations, though there is a small advantage when runners are on.

Luis Mey has looked real good over the last week. He hasn’t walked any of the 23 hitters he’s faced. Given his history that sticks out like a sore thumb because you just don’t expect to see him not being wild. But it’s also four games over the span of a week. He’s had stints like this before. While in Louisville this season he walked three batters in the first month, covering 11.0 innings. Then Cincinnati called him up and he walked seven batters in the six games he pitched in (a batter in every game and then two in his final outing) before they sent him back down.

While fans of the Reds are certainly going to be hoping that Luis Mey has figured it out, and the broadcast team certainly shared a reason that maybe you should buy it…. there was a whole lot of information missing from what they showed. That’s not to say that maybe Mey did figure something out. Perhaps he did. But upon even the smallest amount of digging it just seemed like the broadcast was trying to tell a story about something that was misleading, even if they didn’t necessarily know it was (perhaps the staff mentioned it to them and this is what they came up with).