New York Mets: What’s going on with Edwin Diaz?
After dominating the 2018 MLB season with the Seattle Mariners, New York Mets closer Edwin Diaz has been absolutely atrocious in 2019. What gives?
What a difference a year makes. While with the Seattle Mariners in 2018, New York Mets RP Edwin Diaz was lights out.
I mean, the type of year that if my life depended on one inning of baseball, there’s a good chance I’m handing the ball to the Diaz to get me out of whatever ridiculous jam I was in.
Anytime you can post an ERA + over 200 for a season, that’s… that’s really good.
2019 Edwin Diaz? I don’t think I’d bet my lunch money on him.
So what happened?
There are wide splits, then there are disparities that will give you whiplash. According to Baseball Savant, Diaz ranks in the 98th percentile in strikeout percentage, but in the THIRD percentile for hard-hit percentage.
To put it in perspective, his hard-hit rate last season was 35.3%, compared to this season, where it has ballooned to 46.1%. What it boils down to, is that when Edwin Diaz is on the mound, if you’re not walking to the dugout, you’re trotting around the bases.
It doesn’t take a whole lot of analysis to realize that this is not exactly the best formula for a pitcher who has a specific role on the team, and often only gets one inning to complete that task. The mistakes are magnified.
Edwin Diaz’s Defensive Help went from Mediocre to Terrible
A good defense is a pitchers best friend. A bad defense is someone you hung out with once, but probably wouldn’t again. The Mets defense is the friend that dashes out the back door when the check comes and you’re in the bathroom.
It puts a lot of pressure on a pitcher when they’re unsure about how the players behind them can handle the ball, and New York has struggled in that department, owning one of the worst defenses in all of baseball, compared to a middle of the road team that Diaz had behind him in Seattle.
While the evidence suggests this hasn’t affected his pitch selection per se, one could easily argue that it does correlate to his approach, using his fastball much more often in 2 strike counts as opposed to his slider.
Take all that into account as things he can control. Of course there’s one thing that he can’t…
New York Mets relievers are pretty much all terrible
More from Call to the Pen
- Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
- Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
- Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
- Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
- 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals
So far this season, bullpens across baseball are sporting a 4.54 ERA, compared to a 4.10 from just last season. The league-wide average for home run to fly ball percentage has also risen from just over 12% to well over 15% in that same time span, so relievers aren’t just getting scored on more often, they look even worse doing it.
If you’ve followed baseball pretty much at all this year, you know there’s ONE significant change from last year to this year that could be leading to these patterns, and at risk of my eyes sticking in an upward position due to excessive eye-rolling, I’ll leave it alone since it’s been written about to death and back again… but you know what i’m talking about.
It’s a significant factor though, because with closers, and their ultra-specialized role, optics can play a key role in our perception of how a pitcher is doing. Any baseball fan knows that sinking feeling when they see their pitcher whip around towards the outfield, pained expression on their face as they watch the little white dot sail over the fence. It’s a bad look, and if it’s happening more often, it looks even worse.
So… What’s the deal then?
The deal is that there isn’t much of a deal.
Yeah, his defense took a significant downgrade when Diaz went to New York from Seattle, and his pitch mix might have changed a bit, but in reality, he’s more just a product of 2019 pitching, and it’s amplified due to his market (New York), the competition level of his division (NL East), and the fact that he was a key acquisition by a team that basically said “come get us” in the offseason.
Next. Kazuhisa Makita could head back to Japan. dark
I don’t believe Edwin Diaz is a worse pitcher than he has been historically, rather he is the perfect example of how the game on the diamond has changed, and how it takes a bit for us in the stands to catch up to it.