After Edwin Diaz gave up a game-tying home run in the Mets’ second game of the season against Atlanta, Luis Rojas spoke about the team still being confident in their closer, and that Diaz, even in giving up the home run, pitched well and just got beat by a good hitter on a good pitch.
But after the struggling reliever's latest poor performance on Thursday, the Mets manager was singing a different tune.
Brought into the game in the ninth with the Mets already trailing, 3-2, Diaz issued a walk, a single (which could have potentially been a double play if not for the runner being in motion), and another walk to load the bases. After striking out Rafael Devers, Diaz hit Jose Peraza with a 3-2 slider that backed into the right-handed hitter to force in a run.
In all, Diaz threw 35 pitches (19 for strikes) while recording just one out. He was charged with one run, pushing his ERA on the young season to 7.71.
“Different. Different Diaz than what I saw in first camp,” Rojas said. “Different Diaz than what I saw in camp now, and then what I saw the first two outings. Just arm-side misses, pulling the ball, slider backing up, so not the same Diaz we’ve seen recently. Definitely, we have to have the talks, we have to work and make sure that we’re getting right back on track. And also some emotions on the mound, we’ll also need to be able to control those as well.
“We need to talk, we need to work. That’s something that we’re going to do as a staff, me as a manager, and we’ll talk with the player. We want to keep him on track to what he showed us in camp that he didn’t show us tonight. It’s something from our coaching standpoint that we’ve got to detect right away, like we did from that outing, and just work on it, fix it quick, because we liked what we saw in the first two camps and what we saw earlier in the season. Tonight was definitely different.”
Aside from just not being able to get hitters out on Thursday, Diaz also let his emotions get to him at times, according to his manager, and that’s something that Rojas knows cannot happen in big situations.
“The best we can do is to work and get to the repetitions, make sure we don’t get emotional out there when we’re in a situation, like coming in and something like that happening to him there, a bases loaded, no outs situation.
“He’s a guy who can definitely get out of that situation because his strikeout ratio – I mean you guys know that this guy has a history of striking out guys and getting out of innings like that. He can definitely do it. He’s got to control his emotions, so that’s some of the things that we’re definitely going to talk about.”
After starting off the season by notching a save in the 1-0 victory against Atlanta on Opening Day, Diaz has allowed runs in each of his last two outings. In such a short season when so much is riding on winning every single game, the way Diaz is used by the Mets in coming games, as well as how he responds to adversity, could have a huge impact in making a run at the postseason.