Mets reliever Edwin Diaz, who has been preparing for the 2020 MLB season while at home in Puerto Rico, continued to get ready on Thursday, throwing to live batters.
Diaz flashed a fastball that reached 97 mph and a slider at 91 mph.
🤩🤩 pic.twitter.com/dcOiShn4OR
- Edwin Diaz (@SugarDiaz39) May 7, 2020
New Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner spoke about Diaz earlier this week during an appearance on Baseball Night in New York: Living Room Edition, explaining what went wrong in 2019 and how the team hopes to fix it.
"Edwin got in trouble with a little bit of arm-side run to his fastball and it ended up finding a few more barrels than he was used to in his career," Hefner said. "And so that's all we've been trying to do is straighten out his fastball so he can get it to his glove side more consistently. There's a grip adjustment in there, there's an intent adjustment in there, and there's also some physical, mechanical adjustments in there as well.
"His number one pitch is his fastball and then his slider is number two. But if we can elevate the slider it'll help his fastball as well. So that's the plan with him."
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