The season is ten percent complete and the Met’s relief pitching ranks 25th in fWAR and sport a clean 6.00 ERA. This is likely inflated due to a .361 batting average on balls in play, which is only .05 points off the league leading Washington Nationals. While the bullpen ranks in the top ten in K%, they also reach that threshold in both HR% and Hard-Hit%. These figures suggest that the Mets’ bullpen is filled with flamethrowers who miss their mark and pay the price dearly for it. What they don’t tell us is how these relievers are being utilized situationally. In his first year as manager, Mickey Callaway received a lot of criticism for his bullpen management, and rightfully so. The lone bright spot of this year’s bullpen, Edwin Diaz, has been at the center of several Mets wins, he has also been utilized incorrectly in my opinion.
A quick scope of Diaz’s season reveals that he has retired all eleven left handed batters that he’s faced, including seven strikeouts; for his career he has posted better splits against lefties. He has also entered every game in the final inning, and the Mets have won every game that he’s appeared in. With six saves in six opportunities and an electric 1.35 ERA, Diaz appears to be fulfilling his duties masterfully. However, despite this success Diaz has been mismanaged a number of times, excluding some head scratching moments where he was forced to bail out the club after a large lead was lost.
On March 31st against the Nationals, the game was tied in the bottom of the ninth inning when the Mets elected to bring Justin Wilson back out to pitch. Wilson gave up a walk off home run to end the game as the Mets failed to sweep their division foes. To many, this seemed like the right call at the time as Wilson had pitched effectively in the prior inning and has past experience closing out games. For the second time in four days, Mets360 will cite the wisdom of Russell Carleton who was hired to the club’s analytics department. Russell explains that a tie game in the ninth inning is the opportune time for your best relief option to be in the game. The idea is that a run given up in the later stages of the game is much more impactful than a run given up in the say, the first inning. By saving your best pitcher for the save opportunity, you are willingly conceding a situational appearance to a lesser pitcher. Wouldn’t you want the best opportunity to protect the tie and worry about saving the lead later on? There’s a behavioral idea of ‘loss aversion’ where people react more intensely to losing something that they already have as opposed to gaining something that they don’t, even if those things carry the same exact value. In this instance, this behavioral ideology justifies the use of Wilson instead of Diaz, however we all know that human behavior is flawed. It’s easy to say in hindsight that the Mets should have brought in their elite closer in that situation, so the next time the Mets find themselves back there, ask yourself “which player puts us in the best position to protect the tie?”
On April 10th at home against the Twins, the Mets held a 9-1 lead entering the eighth inning. This writer was at the game, braving the cold and windy weather and looking forward to a smooth final two innings (as I am sure the Mets bullpen was as well). Instead, four quick runs were scored by the Twins to bring the game within five and Edwin Diaz was put into a non-save situation with a leverage score of .47 according to Baseball Reference (1 is considered average leverage). While it may sound like nitpicking, my argument here is that Diaz was unnecessarily brought into a low leverage situation, up five runs, which could have been opportune for someone like Justin Wilson or Robert Gsellman.
On April 15th, with the bases loaded and two outs against the Phillies, the Mets brought in Gsellman who walked in a run to tie the game. Gsellman retired the next batter and was asked to come back out for the ninth, where he handled the Phillies in order. In the tenth, Luis Avilan was summoned in a tie game, where he gave up two hard hit singles which he was fortunate to work around. The Mets took the lead in the eleventh and brought in Diaz to shut down Philadelphia’s best hitters and close out the win. Similar to the earlier Justin Wilson situation, Mets fans should be left wondering why their best reliever was not called upon sooner. Instead, high leverage opportunities were trusted upon Robert Gsellman and Luis Avilan. After the game, Mickey Callaway was quoted in saying that “Edwin Diaz is not going to get four outs” and “Once you get a lead, he’s in the game. We had Gagnon ready to go.” The fact that the Mets were willing to send out Avilan and Drew Gagnon before Edwin Diaz is telling of their philosophy. The leverage score for Avilan was 3.14 which was almost a full point greater than the situation that Diaz entered while up one run in the bottom of the eleventh. The truth of the matter is that pitching with a lead is easier than pitching in a tie game, yet the Mets seem unreasonably rigid in their situational philosophy which has already cost them a game against an NL East competitor.
Callaway claims that the decision to pitch Diaz for only three outs and with the lead is due to “personnel changes” and is not at all related to the bone spur in his throwing elbow. I hope that the Mets manager sees the error in his ways, and starts to utilize his best players in the highest leverage positions. There are some traditional baseball ideologies that are tried and true such as ‘defense up the middle’ and ‘power at the corners’. However, the words ‘closer’ and ‘save’ should be removed from our baseball vernacular, perhaps then we will realize that Edwin Diaz, one of the best relief pitchers in the game, is being managed incorrectly.