Ask any Mets fan, and they’ll tell you that the biggest frustration of the 2019 season was the underperformance of the team’s bullpen. Dig a little deeper and they’ll tell you more specifically that it was the underperformance of Edwin Diaz. 

Diaz’s performance last season is not as cut and dry as many may think. It wasn’t as simple as him regressing to a bad pitcher. 

There were a lot of pieces to the story that were lost within the frustration of the season. This is taking into account the midseason pitching coach changes, pressures of being in New York, as well as the change in the feeling of the ball. Diaz didn’t have many components on his side. 

Several pitchers came out last season mentioning that the ball had felt different because the seams were tighter. For Diaz, that difference added to a lot of his stress because he couldn’t execute his slider properly, which he was dependent on for most of his strikes.

His slider was breaking in a way that the batters knew that they could sit on his fastball, since his once-dominant pitch wasn’t being carried out in the way he needed it to.

Now going into the delayed 2020 season, the Mets really need Diaz to be solid in order to exceed expectations. Especially with some newly- revealed IL stints for Marcus Stroman and Robert Gsellman, Diaz will be needed to make sure that wins don’t slip away in the last inning. 

A prime example of this is Diaz’s outing yesterday against the Braves. Diaz struck out two and allowed one run.

Despite not securing the save for the Mets, the run that happened was the best thing that could have occurred in that situation.

The run was allowed on a fastball with no one else on base, leading Diaz to strike out Adam Duvall for the last out. 

Diaz’s biggest problems last season were his slider and the inability to gain back his confidence once his performance wavered.

In his two outings, he wasn’t back to the elite pitcher he once was, but he was pretty close to it compared to last season. Manager Luis Rojas expressed his own confidence in Diaz during his postgame press conference.

Despite allowing the run on Saturday, Diaz kept his cool and finished off the inning strong, which is something he previously struggled with. His execution and command seemed like a completely different pitcher from last year. 

It would have been unrealistic to see a complete 180 coming from the young pitcher compared to the mistakes of last season. Yet almost all the issues he had were with his off-speed pitches and looking at them now, it seems that there is a much higher chance that it continues to improve – leaving the Mets in a much better position than expected.

Moving forward into the season, if he continues to build up his confidence – as well as continue to work on the execution of his off-speed pitches – he has the potential to really add the edge that the Mets need to have a strong season, even with two main components being on the bench for an unknown period of time.

Even with the tying run Diaz allowed yesterday, it is important to take into account that in retrospect his pitching wasn’t bad, and if the run support was there, no one would be talking about Marcell Ozuna‘s hit.