Indeed, Diaz’s season kept on nosediving from there. And just like that, an ugly pattern was beginning to form. And then following that disappointing performance, he somehow had one which was even worse than the one against the Dodgers, as he gave up a whopping five runs on two homers in 0.1 innings to lose a game against the Phillies. He subsequently came back out for the tenth inning and gave up yet another run to lose the game for the Mets. But then on June 13th against the Cardinals, he blew a two-run lead in the ninth inning. And his next few appearances following his disastrous game against the Dodgers went off largely without incident. There wasn’t necessarily any reason to believe that it was indicative of the kind of production (or lack thereof) we could expect to see from Diaz moving forward. It was an embarassing performance for Diaz-just the second time in his career in which he gave up four runs in a game (interestingly, the first time he did it occurred exactly one year previously)-and it ballooned his ERA up from 1.64 to 3.22. He was not able to record an out until three batters later, when he gave up a sacrifice fly with the bases loaded to give the Dodgers a stunning walkoff win. Diaz subsequently gave up back-to-back doubles to make it four extra-base hits in a row, and just like that we had ourselves a tie ballgame. Alas, things imploded for him very quickly, as he gave up back-to-back homers to start things off in the inning. By all accounts, it should have been an easy save even for a closer who was not of his caliber. On May 29th, Diaz entered a game against the Dodgers in the bottom of the ninth with the Mets leading 8-5. Between the discrepency between his ERA and his FIP and his unusually high HR/9 rate (after only giving up five homers in 2018, he’d already given up three on the season), there were perhaps warning signs for the troubles that were to follow, but the Mets nevertheless had plenty of reason to be confident in him at this time. Like any closer, he’d blown the occasional game-he suffered back-to-back losses in a series against the Reds, for instance, and his first blown save of the season came on May 25th against the Tigers-but the good far outweighed the bad up to that point. In his first 24 games, he more or less looked like the pitcher the Mets were expecting to get, as he put up a 1.64 ERA/2.76 FIP with 13 saves and 35 strikeouts in 22 innings pitched. It might be hard to remember in light of how his year ultimately went, but the season actually started out pretty well for Diaz. While Van Wagenen made other additions to the bullpen as well, Diaz was clearly the highlight, someone the Mets assumed would lock down the ninth inning not just in 2019, but for years to come. The 24-year-old righty was arguably the single best reliever in all of baseball for Seattle in 2018, putting up a dominant 1.96 ERA/1.61 FIP with a league-leading 57 saves and a whopping 124 strikeouts in 73.1 innings. The Mets surrendered an impressive package of talent to the Mariners in exchange for him and Robinson Cano-said package being highlighted by former first-round picks Jarred Kelenic and Justin Dunn-but based on the pitcher he had been the prior season, paying a high price was justified. When Brodie Van Wagenen took the job as the Mets general manager, his number one priority was fixing a broken bullpen which had cost the team so many games over the past couple seasons.Įnter Edwin Diaz. While there were many reasons why those two teams were terrible, the abject awfulness of their relievers ranks high on the list. The Mets had the third highest bullpen ERA out of any major league team in 2018.
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