Sugar We’re Goin’…Up?
As Edwin Díaz goes, so do the Mets.
It’s a refrain we’ve heard from the collective Mets media all season, and its value can be questioned. After all, how valuable can a pitcher who throws about 60 innings a season actually be?
Turns out, pretty valuable…at least when the pressure gets turned up.
That’s because the Mets’ bullpen has been unquestionably the least reliable part of the team so far this postseason. It has given up at least one run in every Mets postseason game but one, the 8-4 Game 1 win over the Milwaukee Brewers in the Wild Card Series. By fielding independent pitching (4.48), the Mets’ bullpen is the third-worst among every playoff team, with the only two worse pens (San Diego and Philadelphia) a huge reason why those teams are not in the playoffs anymore.
And there are few shutdown relievers the Mets can lean on. By FIP, the Mets’ top reliever so far this postseason has been Reed Garrett (1.37), and he’s barely in the 25th percentile of 2024 playoff relievers. The next best have been Díaz and Ryne Stanek, who at 31st and 32nd place are squarely in the middle of the pack, FIP-wise.
Considering how poorly the last two-ish weeks of the Díaz experience have gone, it’s amazing he’s ranked that highly. In his final regular-season appearance, Díaz gave up three hits and two earned runs that allowed the Atlanta Braves to take the lead in the most important game of the regular season. A franchise-shifting home run from Francisco Lindor gave Díaz a shot at redemption—which he nailed—giving the closer the bittersweet blown save + win combo in the box score.
Things didn’t start much better for Díaz in the postseason. He got five crucial outs in the series-clinching game against the Brewers, but he walked two batters along the way and looked shaky throughout. He then blew a lead by giving up three runs in the eighth inning against the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 2 of the Division Series, a game the offense couldn’t rescue from its closer (as hard as Mark Vientos tried).
It would have been understandable to give up on Díaz in the moment, but two things were still working in his favor:
- Mets manager Carlos Mendoza has a surprisingly big circle of trust and a long leash (Phil Maton has pitched four innings this postseason, for goodness sake).
- Díaz’s fastball may be back.
In the Game 2 loss against the Phillies, Díaz threw 25 pitches and 16 sliders, though it’s not uncommon for him to throw his slider more than his fastball. In 2022, for example, he threw the slider 58.1% of the time, and by run value it was one of the most effective pitches in all of baseball.
But 16 sliders out of 25 pitches doesn’t look like a pitcher simply using his best weapon—it looks like someone who lost all confidence in his fastball.
Thankfully, that confidence returned in the clinching Game 4, with Díaz throwing the fastball in 17 out of his 23 pitches (perhaps because the Phillies previously found success against the slider). And after walking the first two batters, Díaz blew his final three batters away, getting Kyle Schwarber to swing through a perfectly dotted 101.1 mph heater that he (nor any other hitter) could touch.
That’s the stuff that Díaz needs to lean on, and it’s the stuff that can help shore up a shaky Mets bullpen.
Díaz’s Game 2 against the Los Angeles Dodgers looked a lot like his Game 4 clincher against the Phillies. He gave up a leadoff single to Andy Pages and a (probably advisable) walk to Shohei Ohtani to face the heart of the Dodgers’ order with no one out.
After starting Mookie Betts with two sliders, Díaz threw 13 straight fastballs to Betts, Teoscar Hernández and Freddie Freeman—all legitimate threats to hit backbreaking home runs—and none of them could touch it. His last pitch of the day was the game-clinching slider to Freeman, but that wasn’t the highlight.
He threw 29 pitches against the Dodgers, 18 of them fastballs, and none of them put into play. Shutdown stuff. But perhaps the most encouraging part of his Game 2 appearance was his confidence on the mound.
Díaz likes to work quickly. With no one on base, Díaz had the fastest tempo between pitches this season (13.8 seconds) of anyone still in the Mets bullpen. But with runners on, Díaz becomes one of the fastest in baseball (15.9 seconds), partly because he objects to holding runners on base.
Once Díaz got his fastball rolling against Betts, he applied the gas. He worked so quickly that at times he seemed annoyed at how much time the batters were wasting between pitches. It’s as if Díaz has an internal meter that tells him he needs to go-go-go when the fastball is working, and it’s hard to argue with the results.
That’s the kind of showing that can boost the confidence of an occasionally rattled closer, and boost the performance of an often-tattooed bullpen. With two runners on, no one out, and arguably the most terrifying top of the lineup in baseball waiting to make their home crowd explode, Díaz turned into an unhittable monster.
Díaz may not be the most important piece to the Mets’ puzzle, despite what Mets writers and critics may say. But no Mets player may have more pressure than him to perform this postseason, and it’s looking like he’s warming up to the spotlight.