Hellickson has allowed a scary 1.6 HR/9 and 23% line drive percentage as he just keeps missing with his fastball and other pitches. Known for his ability to locate his pitches right on the edges of the zone, Hellickson has somehow lost that on his fastball, allowing nearly three times as many flyballs than groundballs on his fastball, the worst mark of his career. On his changeup, it has been very good overall, but he is making mistakes with it and allowing too much hard contact as he’s relying on it too much knowing he can’t locate his fastball. Hellickson’s batting average on balls in play this year is .287, right around league average, after registering at .224 and .264 the last two years, and that could be viewed as regression to the mean. It’s not–Hellickson is just failing to execute his pitches consistently enough, leading to hard contact. It has little to do with luck.

How can Hellickson fix this? He just has to find a way to get his fastball command back on track to set up his entire repertoire, and his home run and line drive rates will go down along with his ERA. His pitches are moving as dynamically as ever and he’s throwing them for strikes, and now he just has to do a better job spotting them down in the zone and on the corners to beat major league hitters on a more regular basis. His entire career, Hellickson’s command has been one of the reasons he has stood out as a pitcher. If he can just return to that, he will absolutely fine. And if he can get his command back on track, that career year we were talking about above may just be in the works.

Zobrist has left #Rays because grandmother died, may miss Monday too

— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) May 5, 2013

It’s terrible that Zobrist’s grandmother died and he certainly bares no blame for leaving the team. However, without him the Rays journey just becomes even tougher. Here’s their lineup for today’s game.

1. Desmond Jennings, CF
2. Matthew Joyce, RF
3. Evan Longoria, 3B
4. James Loney, 1B
5. Kelly Johnson, LF
6. Ryan Roberts, 2B
7. Jose Lobaton, C
8. Sean Rodriguez, SS
9. Alex Cobb, P

Without Zobrist, the Rays lineup goes from passable to decrepit. Kelly Johnson batting fifth? Ryan Roberts batting sixth, against a right-handed hitter no less? And without Zobrist, the Rays lose plenty of versatility and didn’t even have time to replace him on the roster as Zobrist’s departure was so sudden. With Yunel Escobar out after getting hit by a pitch, Rodriguez is the only shortstop left on the Rays roster–if he goes down, Ryan Roberts would probably have to play out of position at shortstop (he played there in the minors leagues, last in 2010). Evan Longoria also has one major league game, a start, at shortstop. Rodriguez probably won’t get hurt, but except in the most desperate situation, the Rays can’t pinch-hit for him or risk exposing their defense. The situation is so dire that Joe Maddon said that he will use pitchers to pinch-run and pinch-hit if he has to. How will the Rays make it through this game?

The Rays need a big performance from Alex Cobb today. He was pitching great until the 6th inning of his last start, and he needs to find a way to get back to that. The top of the lineup has to step up, with Evan Longoria being the key to the entire time, and look for players like Johnson, Roberts, and Rodriguez to be especially aggressive on the basepaths if they can get on as the Rays do whatever they can to manufacture runs. This is only a two-day thing with Zobrist being gone. But with the season looking bad enough already, the Rays need to find a way to stay afloat and win games, and Zobrist’s absence for a couple days only makes it tougher.

In Hellickson’s last three starts, he has gone 1-1 with a 3.15 ERA in 20 innings pitched. Most impressively, he has struck out 23 batters, walked just 6, and allowed only 2 home runs. Those numbers amount to a 10.4 K/9, a 2.7 BB/9, a 0.9 HR/9, and a 3.10 FIP. Why does this matter? Hellickson has been pitching well of late, but could it just be a fluke? That might be the case, but the evidence suggests otherwise. In his last three starts, Hellickson has struck out 23 of the 73 batters he has faced, 31.5%. The probability of him doing that if his true strikeout rate should have been his career mark of 16.8% is just .00039, or 2577 to 1 odds. Hellickson’s breakthrough looks real, and suddenly he’s a different pitcher and quite possibly a better one.

The difference isn’t just statistical but also lies in Hellickson’s pitch usage, specifically for his curveball. As we’ve talked about before, Hellickson has always had two plus pitches in his fastball and changeup, but now his curveball has come together to give hitters three quality pitches to contend with. Hellickson has used his curveball 20% of the time in 2013 per Brooks Baseball compared to just 12% of his pitches in 2012 as he has shown more confidence in it and used it to get outstanding results. Hitters are hitting just .136 off of Hellickson’s curveball this season, the best of any of his pitches and far better than his .242 mark he has managed on it for his career.

With curveball giving hitters yet another great pitch to think about, Hellickson is fooling hitters more than ever and finding a way to notch more strikeouts and go deeper into games. There’s a reason that the Rays were confident giving Hellickson their number two starter job to begin the season, and Hellickson is poised to continue his development as a pitcher and give the Rays yet another dominant young pitcher at the top of their rotation. Opposing the Rays has never been fun for hitters–but with Hellickson joining with David Price and Matt Moore, expect batters to be miserable more than ever.