Metstradamus - The Mets Need A Washington Closer

 

By metstradamus | September 6, 2021 5:03 pm

Edwin Diaz’s numbers in Washington were atrocious:

• 7.36 ERA
• 1.773 WHIP
• .952 OPS against
• .290 AVG against in 35 plate appearances
• Nine walks

They didn’t get better today. Diaz was entrusted with a 3-2 lead in the 9th inning after Pete Alonso gave the Mets the lead on a 6th inning home run. The rest of the bullpen had locked it down for Trevor Williams, who probably shouldn’t have been in the game as long as he was but lasted five innings and only giving up two runs despite giving up ten hits and three walks. All the Mets needed was for Diaz to regain the dominance he had before he got to Washington.

Instead, he walked the leadoff batter (Alcides Escobar) on four pitches. If you’ve watched baseball for a day, you’ve watched it for 100 years, and you know that leadoff walks will kill you. Murder you.

Diaz bounced back and got Juan Soto to fly out to left on a nice jumping catch by Jeff McNeil down the line, but then Diaz walked Josh Bell. Jugglers are always looking to see if they can add an extra knife to the routine, but that doesn’t mean a closer should do it, especially when burgeoning Met killer Andrew Stevenson is coming up to the plate. Diaz had Stevenson 0-2 on good sliders, showed him the fastball up, and then went back to the slider. But it caught too much of the middle of the plate and Escobar scored to tie the game.

The Mets actually challenged whether Escobar touched the plate, and even though he slid directly over it, replay showed that there was at least a chance that he missed it. Credit to the Mets bench for the ingenuity, and they might have been right. But it wasn’t obvious, so there was no way that Chelsea was going to overturn it. Immediately afterwards, Carter Kieboom dribbled one of the middle that the Mets couldn’t make a play on, and Bell scored the winning run to end it.

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