Edwin Diaz Slid His Way to a Record Contract

Edwin Díaz is now the highest-paid reliever in baseball, after signing a five-year, $102 million deal to remain with the Mets. It’s also the largest for a reliever in MLB history.

Diaz will make $20.4 million per year, surpassing the White Sox’s Liam Hendricks previous record-setting mark of $18 million per year.

In order to get here, all Díaz had to do was be himself.

The Mets closer for the next half-decade made one huge adjustment coming into the 2022 season. He started throwing his best pitch – and likely the best pitch in baseball – even more.

Díaz upped his slider usage in 2022 to 58.1%. Previously, the most he’d ever thrown it was 37.8%, a mark he set in 2021. Conversely, his fastball usage dropped from 61.6% in 2021 to 41.8% in 2022.

The thing with Díaz is his slider didn’t change. It follows the same exact shape and velocity since he came to the Mets in 2019. The only thing they had to do was throw it more.

By run value, Díaz’s slider was -22. That was the fifth-best mark of any pitch in the major leagues last season. The only pitches better are Dylan Cease‘s slider (-36), Shohei Ohtani‘s slider (-28), Sandy Alcantara‘s changeup, (-25), and Justin Verlander‘s four-seamer (-24).

But, Díaz only threw his slider 539 times. Alcantara’s changeup was thrown 899 times. Ohtani’s slider 1,027. Verlander’s four-seamer 1,315. Cease’s slider 1,338. No one is generating as much run value per 100 pitches as Diaz.

Among pitchers who faced at least 100 batters last season, Diaz and his slider generated -4.1 RV/100, the highest mark in baseball.

And what did batters do against the pitch?

They batted .114/.134/.154. Whiffed on it 54.7% of the time. And struckout 54.3% of the time. Both of those marks ranked second in baseball.

Díaz began trusting the pitch more. From 2021 to 2022, the average velocity increased only 0.2 miles per hour, it had half an inch less of vertical movement and a third of an inch more of horizontal break. That’s negligible.

What he did change was his mindset. With advice from Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez and Mariano Rivera – who both pitched under New York’s bright lights – he became the most dominant closing pitcher in baseball.

Here’s this from ESPN’s Joon Lee in September:

Diaz took to heart some tips he’d gotten from another Hall of Famer: Yankees legend Mariano Rivera. Diaz met Rivera for the first time at the World Series in Los Angeles in 2018, when he was named the American League Reliever of the Year. More than a year later, as he worked through the adjustments to his release point, Diaz would recall Rivera’s advice about being a great late-inning reliever for a long time.

“Flush everything right away,” Rivera had told Diaz. “If you pitch good, flush it right away. You did good, you did bad — flush it right away. You have to come to the ballpark tomorrow and you got to go out again and compete.”

Díaz’s contract could still be a bargain. It’s by no means a perfect measure of value but Diaz has surpassed his new contract value twice before. In 2018 in Seattle he was worth $27.8 million in Fangraphs Dollars per WAR calculation. Last season he was worth $23.9 million.

Now 28 years old, the Mets have locked up Díaz for what will be the remainder or what should be the best years of his career. The trumpets are here to stay and Díaz looks like someone capable of keeping the celebration going.