Edwin Diaz RHP

Player Data: Age: 26, B/T: R/R
Primary Stats: 26 G, 25.2 IP, 2-1, 1.75 ERA, 2 HLD, 2 HR, 14 BB, 50 SO, 1.25 WHIP, 6 SV
Advanced Stats: 244 ERA+, 2.18 FIP, 1.3 bWAR. 0.9 fWAR

Free Agent: 2023
2020 Salary: $5.1M

Grade: B+

2020 Review

After the 2019 season, many Mets fans lost hope in Edwin Diaz due to his complete 180 in performance when coming to New York.

Yet there were more factors than people realized that went into Diaz’s inability to have command on the mound last season, and because of this, it seemed that fans would hold their breath every time he stepped on the hill.

The majority of those issues seemed to stem from a lack of confidence and an inability to have good control on his slider, which is half his repertoire. Several pitchers came out that season explaining how the change in the seams on the ball affected their offspeed pitches.

When Diaz lost control of his pitches, he often left them over the plate, leading to 15 home runs allowed in 2019. This can explain how the young star wasn’t in a position where he was going to succeed.

Going into 2020, the problems with his slider improved greatly. In 2019, batters knew they could sit on Diaz’s fastball because they could get a hard hit off his slider. In 2020 they feared his slider, as he produced an absurd 57.6% whiff rate, putting away 33.3% of batters on that pitch.

The first two weeks of the season were pretty rough for Diaz, but after that, he got into a groove striking out 45.9% of players he faced. Which is actually the highest in his career so far.

In 2019, he had one of the highest hard-hit rates at 45.7%. While he wasn’t back to Seattle numbers this year (38.6%), he was pretty dang close.

Diaz only really uses two pitches, his four-seam, and his slider. Therefore when one is struggling, he’s affected much more than a pitcher who even has one extra pitch up their sleeve.

One thing worth noting when it comes to Diaz’s season, is that he still had four blown saves, continuing the narrative that he could not succeed in New York. Still, the 26-year-old pitcher had a stellar season in 2020, especially when looking at his advanced metrics.

Diaz ranked in the 96th percentile or higher in xwOBA, xERA, xBA (98th), xSLG (99th), K% (99th) and Whiff % (100th). Based on these metrics, Diaz was one of the most dominant pitcher’s in baseball.

Some might say that Diaz finishing the 2020 season with only six saves is nothing impressive, yet the highest number of saves this season was 16 and the Mets quite honestly didn’t give him many save opportunities.

In a shortened season, where he’s really only pitching one inning every few days, it’s hard to live up to everyone’s expectations. But considering his performance in the month of September, where Diaz only allowed one run over 11 games, the flamethrower fit the billing as an elite closer.

Despite the adversaries, Diaz changed his narrative and was a finalist for the 2020 All-MLB team.

2021 Outlook

With Steve Cohen being voted in as the Mets new owner, there are high hopes for Diaz as Cohen is said to be looking into expanding the franchise’s analytics department. This push towards analytics could maximize Diaz’s strengths even further.

While Diaz could have ended up being one of those players that just can’t succeed in New York, the 2020 season proved that wrong, as there were even more stressors going into this season.

Once the closer fell into a nice groove, he was as elite as ever, despite having an insane amount of criticism last season. Diaz is by no means a bad pitcher and he did a great job at proving those saying so wrong.