Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
The Mets were the best team in baseball at closing out games in 2022.
Led by closer Edwin Diaz, the Mets entered the ninth inning with a lead 89 times. Their record in those games? 89-0, an MLB-best and franchise record.
Simply put, when the Mets had a lead they didn’t relinquish it. Diaz finished the season by striking out over half the batters he faced. He became one of three pitchers to finish a season striking out more than half the batters he faced with a minimum of 40 innings pitched.
But Diaz couldn’t do it alone.
Adam Ottavino shut the door in the late innings. He was used in high-leverage situations the second-most of any pitcher on the Mets (behind Diaz) and he delivered.
When pitching in the eighth inning, Ottavino had a 1.40 ERA and held batters to a .194/.257/.312 slash line. In the ninth he was even better with a 0.56 ERA with an opposing slash line of .148/.220/.222. While pitching with a lead, Ottavino held opponents to a batting average under .200 and a slugging percentage that hovered around .300.
Now both are back. Diaz inked the richest contract for a reliever in history with a five-year, $102 million deal. Ottavino, at 37, signed on for another two years, totaling $14.5 million.
Even better than those deals, the Mets brought in two relief pitchers who were better than Ottavino last season, according to FanGraphs positional power rankings. Diaz ranked first and Ottavino 37th. David Robertson and Brooks Raley ranked 31st and 32nd, respectively.
Robertson spent most of 2022 as a closer, racking up 20 saves. In the ninth inning, he had a 2.66 ERA while opponents hit .178/.301/.308 off him. Where Robertson is arguably worse than Ottavino for a future set-up man role is strikeout ratios. Ottavino turns up the heat in the late innings and nearly doubles Robertson’s average of 2.50 strikeouts/walks.
Raley, who spent last season in Tampa Bay, was used from the fourth inning through the ninth inning. He’ll likely be best deployed by the Mets based on matchup as he is a lefty. Raley is a bit of a conundrum, he had a 7.71 ERA in the eighth inning last season (11.2 IP) but never had an ERA over 3.00 in any other inning. Excluding the seventh inning he had a 3.00 ERA across the board.
Still Raley was terrific. When ahead, opponents hit .188/.257/.258. When pitching from behind, opponents hit .162/.256/.189.
The Mets didn’t relinquish many leads last season and have similar plans to do so with an even better bullpen for 2023. Are they going to be 89-0 good? Likely there will be a slip-up but opposing hitters will dread having to face anyone out of the Mets bullpen over the final three innings.
