Edwin Diaz
The New York Mets went to San Francisco looking to take yet another series, but this time, they failed, and for the first time this season, we saw some cracks in the foundation.
1. If Edwin Diaz wants to be considered an elite closer, he cannot blow that save. Even when he is at his best, he has a propensity to blow saves in an inordinate fashion, and that is starting to creep back this season.
2. A bigger issue in the bullpen is Drew Smith. The Mets can ill afford him regressing. No, you shouldn’t anticipate he would be the 12 scoreless appearance guy he was to start the season, but lately, he’s allowed runs in four of his last six appearances. There needs to be a happy medium here.
3. Luis Guillorme is one of the Mets best players. He sits. J.D. Davis has a four hit game. He sits. Dominic Smith has a multi-hit game. He sits. It’s like Buck Showalter is punishing players for playing well.
4. Starting Thomas Szapucki was just plain wrong on every level, and it cost the Mets a game.
5. Yet again, Trevor Williams and Stephen Nogosek stepped up for the Mets. Williams needs a job in the starting rotation, and Nogosek is earning a deeper look going forward.
6. Colin Holderman was been fantastic.
7. Chris Bassitt chose a bad time for his first bad start, but it is what it is. He’s been great all year, and he will be fine.
8. With his versatility and hitting, the Mets can ill afford to lose Jeff McNeil. That is even with Guillorme being more than capable of locking down second.
9. McNeil’s sliding catch is why this Mets team is great. It was 9-1 in the third, and he’s risking injury to make an out. This team keeps fighting and does not quit no matter what the obstacle.
10. Francisco Lindor was a force in this series, and he fueled that seven run comeback. It was a reminder he’s an All-Star caliber player and future Hall of Famer.
11. For the first time in a long time, Eduardo Escobar had a good series. It was more than the doubles. It was the hustle on that infield single.
12. Brandon Nimmo and Starling Marte certainly set the tone atop the lineup. It’s not just the at-bats or getting on base. It’s the way they hustle. It has rubbed off on everyone on this roster.
13. You can say until you’re blue in the face the Mets need to get a starting pitcher. They’re not available now. The Mets just have to weather this storm.
14. The ceiling is not caving in on this team. That is partially because the Phillies and Nationals are next. That said, they absolutely need to take care of business with an absolutely brutal West Coast trip to open June.
15. Just as Patrick Mazeika looked like he was going to push for more playing time, he stopped hitting. He also doesn’t seem to be syncing with up with the starting pitchers.
16. For all the talk about J.D. Martinez, the Boston Red Sox have gotten hot, and it looks like they can play themselves back into the expanded postseason picture. Also, we again need to note teams don’t make big trades like this in May.
17. While many are focusing on trades and needs and starting to panic, this Mets team keeps reminding us how good they are and just how much fight they have. That ninth inning rally against the Phillies was no fluke. This is deeply ingrained in the team’s DNA.
18. Mark Canha has really stepped it up of late. He had a big series against the Giants, and he’s reached safely in seven straight games. This comes at a time when the Mets need all of their bats to step it up.
19. It is certainly interesting that Showalter thinks Canha needs to sit as much as he does. What it says is difficult to ascertain, but we will see if this changes with McNeil banged up.
20. The Mets have a chance to absolutely bury the Phillies. They need to take advantage.
The most promising sign we have seen from Edwin Diaz this year was how he reacted to the no-hitter. He knew what was happening, and what he needed to do. That would be the best we’ve ever seen of him.
Really, this year is the best we’ve seen of him. He’s having his first All-Star caliber season with the New York Mets, and there is a real and justified discussion about the need to extend him.
Diaz has been very, very good this year. However, as we saw in San Francisco, he’s just not quite elite. Not yet.
The Mets were down 8-4 entering the top of the eighth when they exploded for seven runs. They took an 11-8 lead.
Drew Smith, who has struggled lately, gave that lead right back. The Giants tied the score at 11-11 before he recorded an out. Fortunately, he was bailed out by Joely Rodriguez.
The Mets offense picked the team off the mat again. After knocking in the first run of that eighth inning rally, Dominic Smith came up huge again leading off the top of the ninth with a triple. Travis Jankowski pinch ran, and he’d score on a Brandon Nimmo sacrifice fly.
The Mets had a 12-11 lead, and they brought Diaz into the game.
Obviously, you need your closer to lock down every game he pitches. That said, these are the games you REALLY need. The Mets fought to get back into the game, and then, they fought back again.
After a double play, all Diaz needed was one more out. He didn’t get it, and the trouble started with a walk to Mike Yastrzemski.
From there, three straight singles from Darin Ruf, Joc Pederson, and Brandon Crawford turned an exhilarating 12-11 victory to a devastating 13-12 defeat.
You’ll note this damage mostly cane from left-handed batters. There’s something there with Diaz.
Yes, by and large, he’s platoon neutral. That said, he’s always walked left-handed batters at a higher clip than right-handed batters. Those walks lead to trouble, and they did here.
This marked the third blown save in 13 chances for Diaz. Those three saves are the second most in all of baseball this season. We can pretend otherwise, but even when Diaz is at his best, blown saves have been an issue for him.
It’s not just the blown saves but the moments. While there were a number of mitigating factors, you can certainly recall how he wilted in his one and only pennant race in 2019.
Overall, you’re better with Diaz than not. We’ve seen him able to rise to the occasion. You can win games and potentially World Series with him.
However, he’s just not elite. He’s not there quite yet. Elite closers lock down that game. He didn’t. We don’t need to over dwell on it because he will be fine in the long run. That still doesn’t mean we have to pretend he’s something he isn’t.
For the first time this season, the New York Mets lost a series. To make matters worse, it was Mets incompetence of the past which came back to haunt them.
1. Paul Sewald is absolutely right. The Mets gave up on him. More to the point, as I’ve pointed out, and as Keith Hernandez and Gary Cohen noted on the broadcast, the Mets completely and utterly botched how they handled him. Sewald absolutely deserved this moment.
2. Sewald was all the more of a debacle when you consider the Mets kept Ryan O’Rourke, Tim Peterson, and Jacob Rhame over him. None of those three pitched past the 2019 season. Sewald is now a very good late inning reliever.
3. It’s not just Sewald, but Chris Flexen where the Mets screw up was the Mariners gain. The good news here is the morons in charge who made those decisions are now gone.
4. The people in charge now get us Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt who were again great in their starts. Much of the Mets success this season is directly attributable to bringing those pitchers onboard.
5. That Patrick Mazeika start behind the plate was rough, and it limited Bassitt to 5.1 innings when he had the stuff to go much deeper.
6. That said the legend of Mazeika grew. Not only did he have the game winning homer, but he also had a key hit in that ninth inning rally which fell short.
7. You cannot have worst at-bats than what Starling Marte and Pete Alonso did with the game tying and go-ahead runs on base than what they did. The Alonso one was even worse considering he got one strike in that at-bat, and he didn’t even swing at the pitch over the heart of the plate.
8. Brandon Nimmo came up huge in that inning with an RBI double. In fact, he’s been great all season and has been the Mets best player. He’s clearly an All-Star, and sooner or later, if he keeps this up, he is going to get MVP consideration.
9. Drew Smith went from impenetrable to allowing runs in consecutive appearances. He will be fine.
10. Carlos Carraso looked bad. While he was worse against the St. Louis Cardinals, he arguably looked worse in this start. Again, he’s been very good for all but two starts, so there is no need to dwell too much here.
11. Good for Adam Ottavino for picked up that win. He’s responded well to that rough patch, and part of the reason is Buck Showalter has been much more responsible in how he uses them.
12. Congratulations to Colin Holderman on his Major League debut. It was rocky, but it was a scoreless inning, and he did flash what could be very good stuff out of the pen.
13. Sewald wasn’t the only pitcher to stick it to his old team. Edwin Diaz struck out all three batters he faced in his only save opportunity in the series. By the way, he’s now played more seasons with the Mets than the Mariners.
14. Joely Rodriguez wasn’t great, and Chasen Shreve allowed homers in consecutive appearances. On that note, Aaron Loup is having another great season. So far, this looks like an unforced error by the Mets, and you do have to wonder how much of that is attributable to the Robinson Cano contract.
15. James McCann being out is going to hurt the Mets. He was great behind the plate, and believe it or not, he was a starting level bat at the position in the majors so far this year.
16. Tomas Nido did step-up in this series actually drawing two walks. To put that in perspective, he drew five all of last season.
17. McCann’s injury is the type which may cost him this year even when he can return. Those hammate bone injuries tend to linger and hamper the ability to hit again. Unfortunately, Francisco Alvarez has been struggling in Double-A putting him even further off the horizon.
18. Francisco Lindor hit a big homer. The Mets need more of that from him.
19. One massive takeaway from this series, even with the series loss, is the Mets beat up on reigning AL Cy Young winner Robbie Ray. It doesn’t matter if it was an off game or not from Ray, the Mets finally hit left-handed pitching.
20. The Mets were at the Rangers beating the Penguins in Game 7. Perhaps, we will see the Rangers at Citi Field watching the Mets win their own Game 7 this postseason.
On April 29, 2022, Tylor Megill, Drew Smith, Joely Rodriguez, Seth Lugo, and Edwin Diaz each took the mound, and none of them allowed a hit. By its very definition this is a no-hitter. In fact, it was one of 17 in Major League history featuring multiple pitchers in a game.
It was an amazing night at Citi Field, and it was a moment New York Mets fans will forever cherish. After all, this was just the second time in team history this pitching fabled franchise had a no-hitter. It was a historic moment in Mets and MLB history.
Really, no one can take that moment away from those five pitchers, this Mets team, the franchise, or the fan base. This will be forever played on SNY, and this is a moment which will be noted somewhere in Citi Field for eternity. It needs to be repeated – nothing can take this away from us.
That includes when Los Angeles Angels pitcher Reid Detmers threw a no-hitter against the Tampa Bay Rays. It was what we have long referred to as a no-hitter, or as Noah Syndergaard put it in his Instagram story, a “real” no-hitter.
Honestly, this is not something which should have been met with any reaction whatsoever. Syndergaard took to celebrating a moment. Instead of analyzing whether he was chiding the Mets or trying to examine why he put quotes around real, we should move on. When Syndergaard was doing this stuff with the Mets, we all loved it.
It’s who he is. He’s a quirky personality. In some ways, it’s why he’s built for the big markets, but more to the point, the second team in the big market. He’s built for the Mets, Angels, or Chicago White Sox. He knows how to garner attention and keep his team in front of the local rival. He’s really good at this.
Whether or not this was a shot at the Mets really doesn’t matter. More to the point, anything anyone says about the co-no, good or bad, really doesn’t matter. That goes for players and analysts alike.
And look, I like that the Mets are having a nice time lately as much as the next person, but this was the first no-hitter of the year. Combined no-hitters are like half birthdays (technically true but otherwise insignificant)
— Hannah Keyser (@HannahRKeyser) May 11, 2022
As an aside here, if you are in the Apple+ TV booth, making comments like this is rather humorous. This is the only “network” who has zero exclusivity to their time slot for a “nationally televised game.” That is even before you consider how maligned that booth has been this season.
Overall, Syndergaard and Keyser can say what they want. Really, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Guess what? The Mets still threw a no-hitter, and this is a first place team who is built to win a World Series. Mets fans have enjoyed every moment of this season, and there are going to be a lot more special moments in store as this team goes deep into October.
When the Mets make the postseason and win the World Series, let’s see what everyone has to say then.
In the third game of the season, Buck Showalter shoehorned Trevor Williams into a game under the auspices he needed to get the reliever work. In that game, Williams was credited with a blown save and a loss after allowing two unearned runs. After Williams blew that game, it seems like Showalter feels no need to get him into a game again.
In fact, since that game, Williams has only gotten into four more games. Aside from the “start,” each of those times the score differential was more than four runs. That included when the Atlanta Braves put a beating on the Mets. All told, whatever you want to call a low leverage reliever, that’s what Williams is.
It’s really bizarre when you look at is. For example, Sean Reid-Foley, a pitcher who was widely anticipated was going to be designated for assignment, was used on seven different occasions. He’s been on the IL for about two weeks now, and he still has three more appearances.
We have also seen some diminishing returns from Adam Ottavino. Ottavino has been mostly good with nine scoreless relief appearances out of his 12 appearances for the season. That said, Showalter also felt compelled to use him for three consecutive days in a series against the Braves. That helped lead to the aforementioned blowout and Williams’ fourth appearance of the season.
The problem there is the Mets need that one extra right-handed arm in the pen. Edwin Diaz, Seth Lugo, and Drew Smith are the late inning relievers. Joely Rodriguez and Chasen Shreve are there for the left-handed relievers. Ottavino was fine for the middle innings, and Trevor May was there for that bridge, but now he’s injured and gone for months.
This could have been a chance to see what Williams has in the tank. However, the Mets haven’t seemed inclined to use him at all. That was even the case in doubleheaders where a spot start opportunity was there. The Mets understandably and correctly went with David Peterson.
Williams was actually useful in the Mets bullpen last season, and he did show some promise. In eight appearances, he pitched 22.1 innings with a 9.3 K/9 and a 3.83 K/BB. Digging deeper, there is something there with Williams.
Generally speaking, he induces weaker contact than most pitchers, and batters have a hard time squaring the ball up against him. Typically speaking, he induces pull side ground balls. With the Mets ability to shift plus having Francisco Lindor and Jeff McNeil up the middle, this should play right into the Mets hands.
He has an effective sinker, and his change is a weapon. We’ve seen his sinker be one as well. There is something there with Williams even if that is being a long or low leverage reliever. Perhaps he could be more, especially refining things and working on pitch mixes with Jeremy Hefner, but he would have to get the reps to do that.
On the long reliever front, he’s been dormant for even that role. For example, Sean Gilmartin made 50 appearances in 2015, and we saw Darren Oliver make 45 appearances in 2006. So far, Williams is on a pace to make 21 appearances. That’s not going to help him, and it’s not going to help the rest of the bullpen.
Sooner or later, the Mets are going to have to give Williams more chances. They’re going to have to get him in a rhythm and try to establish himself as a real part of this bullpen. If he does, this bullpen is even better. If not, you can move on and find someone else. However, if you’re not pitching him, you can’t make any of these needed assessments. That needs to change soon.
Entering this season, there was serious concern over James McCann and Tomás Nido. Between the two of them, neither one could really hit, and in terms of McCann, his defense regressed significantly. Between the two of them, Mets catchers were fifth worst in the majors by fWAR.
To some degree, a little over one month into the season, it would appear our concerns were justified. After all, McCann and Nido have combined for a 57 wRC+. While it’s shocking that’s only seventh worst in the majors, it is still horrific.
Now, a large part of that is Nido. His 38 wRC+ is eighth worst among catchers who have at least 40 plate appearances. With respect to McCann, for all the consternation, his 70 wRC+ is at least playable for the position as it is the 26th best among catchers. No, it’s not great, but with 30 teams, that’s a starting bat.
Here’s the thing, despite the struggles at the plate, the Mets catchers have been excelling this season, and as a result, the Mets are in first place as a result with the second best run differential in the National League.
In terms of framing, Mets catchers rank best in the National League. They’re also tops in terms of defensive fWAR.
James McCann has seen big improvements in his framing at the bottom of the zone compared to '21.
In '21, McCann converted 40.7% of non-swing pitches into called strikes in Attack Zones 17, 18 & 19.
In '22, McCann's converted 51.4% of non-swing pitches into called strikes. #Mets pic.twitter.com/fmXas9jCiP
— Mathew Brownstein (@MBrownstein89) May 9, 2022
As noted by Baseball Savant, McCann is the 12th best framer in all of baseball, and Nido is 33rd. Make no mistake here, this is a driving force behind the Mets success this season.
From a pitching perspective, the Mets have the fourth best FIP and fifth best ERA. From a starting pitching perspective, they have the third best FIP and foruth best ERA. All told, Mets starters have the second best fWAR in the majors.
It does help having pitchers like Max Scherzer. However, the Mets have gotten top performances across their starting staff, and that is without Jacob deGrom. That includes Tylor Megill surprising, and Chris Bassitt being even better than he was with Oakland.
Really, it was no accident the Mets had a combined no-hitter. McCann was brilliant behind the plate with his framing and pitching calling with Megill, Drew Smith, Joely Rodriguez, Seth Lugo, and Edwin Diaz combining for the no-hitter. Seeing these pitchers with Mets catchers, we are bound to see more memorable performances this season.
Overall, this Mets team has been led by their pitching, and that is in large part because of what is happening behind the plate. No, McCann isn’t hitting, and Nido really isn’t hitting. Despite that, they’ve been driving forces for this Mets team because their work behind the plate has been stellar, and as a a result, so have been the Mets so far this season.