How The Mets Can Replace Edwin Díaz

Allow me to channel my inner Brad Pitt for a second and get this out of the way: “Guys you’re still trying to replace Díaz and we can’t do it. Now what we might be able to do is recreate him, recreate him in the aggregate.” Here is the spoiler to this article, at this current moment in the middle of March, they do not need to trade for Alexis Díaz or David Bednar.

If the Mets did decide to go down the trade route, however, our own Jack Markowski looked at potential trade targets. And, yes, both the younger Díaz and Bednar are included in that list.

Win Probability Added (WPA on FanGraphs) is a cumulative statistic that adds how much win probability a player adds over the course of the season. I like this stat to measure a team’s bullpen and relievers in general because it does not punish relievers for a few bad outings and it gives them more credit than WAR for their in-game contributions.

Relievers have an enormous impact in terms of their ability to sway game by game outcomes and WPA reflects that more than WAR. No reliever really came close in terms of being in the top of the WAR leaderboards, but five out of the top-10 pitchers in terms of WPA were relievers.

Okay, so here is the good news. The Mets bullpen was 11th in baseball in terms of WPA in 2022. Here is the bad news: Edwin Díaz had a 3.60 WPA while everyone else combined for -0.57 WPA. The piece of good news Mets fans can be happy with though is that David Robertson had a 2.63 WPA and Brooks Raley had a 1.09 WPA in 2022. Adam Ottavino had a more mediocre 0.49 WPA but some amount of regression in the positive direction should help the veteran righty. Ottavino had a 1.24 FIP in low leverage spots, a 4.28 FIP in medium leverage spots, and 4.57 FIP in high leverage spots last year. The sample size was quite larger in low leverage spots so one can hope/expect that a more balanced performance in medium and high leverage situations will lead to a higher WPA for Ottavino.

Add that to the fact the Mets have more relievers with options which should help them avoid leaving guys who are struggling on the Major League roster. The bottom of the Mets bullpen combined for a -2.56 WPA, and the regulars like Seth Lugo, Trevor May, Joely Rodriguez, and Drew Smith all had negative WPAs.

Aside from Robertson, Ottavino, and Raley, the Mets will not have a lot of relievers that should and will get a long leash on the roster. For example, I really like John Curtiss but if the Curtiss experiment does not work out, the Mets can be a lot more decisive than they were with say, Seth Lugo. This is why I am not all aboard the Zack Britton train. They have been heavily going in on getting relievers they can cycle through in an attempt to find the best bullpen. Britton feels like a move for the sake of making a move and he could be an arm they hang onto for longer than they should.

The Mets still have a bullpen with effective arms and they can more than hold the fort down until the deadline. Also just looking at the top bullpens from last year, the Astros, Mariners, Yankees, and Dodgers did not have a Díaz type arm in their bullpen. All of those bullpens were built on amassing failed starters, waiver claims, and unearthing arms in trades.

At the end of the day, replacing 60 innings of a high leverage reliever like Díaz is easier than replacing one of their top three starters or one of their top five hitters. The Mets still have high expectations and they should have confidence in their existing high leverage arms to step up to start the season. As Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs shows in his article, the Mets playoff percentage is still at a very high 77.7% and their World Series percentage only dropped 1.4%. The Mets would have been great with Díaz, but they will still manage to be very good without Díaz in 2023.