The back of the pen

[Frayed Knot]

There are, as there usually are, a million ways to autopsy the season after you come up short. But I think this year it was pretty obvious that the main shortfall as compared to expectations

lies in just one place: with the supposed stalwarts who were supposed to shut down the end of games. What I'm trying to do here is put on number on that failure.



While we can trash the logic of Brodie's biggest off-season move last winter, and specifically wonder whether he was guilty of 'buying high' on Diaz coming off such a stellar year that he was

unlikely to repeat, or even the wisdom of importing 'proven' closers vs hoping one will turn up through trial and error, it's clear that what he provided wasn't even within the realm of reason.

That goes for Familia as well even if not quite to the same degree. Neither is at age age [ED = 25 just as the season began, JF = 30 in a few weeks] where you could reliably predict downfalls,

and while Familia missed a few weeks with an injury, Diaz, as far as we know anyway, was healthy all season long.



So if we don't want to just assume the two could repeat 2018, how about asking them for merely the average of the past three seasons? For Diaz that means the average of his ML career to date

prior to this season. For Familia it's the previous 2-1/2 as a Met plus his partial season in Oakland. If we take those average rates and compare them to what we could reasonably have expected

vs what we got instead what we get is:

- instead of a combined total of 74 ER allowed, we'd get exactly half, 37

- instead of 116 hits in 118 innings we had a right to expect more like 89

- those 22 HRs allowed become 8

- 64 walks are cut down to 45, while K's remain virtually the same [162 to 157]

So that's an extra 37 runs allowed on 27 extra hits and 19 more walks

THIRTY SEVEN EXTRA RUNS!!!



Now normally the 'Pythagorean Wins' projection figures that it takes about 10 extra runs allowed/not scored to turn a win into a loss. So by that method alone we're talking 4 lost wins accountable

to those extra 37 runs allowed, a figure that would have put us at 90 wins rather than 86.

But I'd argue that runs at the end of a game, where the addition/subtraction of one or two can flip games around, can't be judged on the same scale as just random runs scored/not-scored across

a season. Not quite sure how those runs can be weighted (even closers give up meaningless runs at times) but shirley the gap between the norm from those two and what we actually got cost more

than just four wins. I mean, take away 37 runs from a combined 132 appearances and 118 innings [66 G each, 58 & 60 IP] and that's gotta mean, what ... Six?, Eight?, Ten?!? At that point we're

into the 90s in wins and maybe up to the mid-90s and who knows how different things could have been.

[Fman99]

We got butt fucked by Familia and Diaz. In other news, the sun is big and hot.



Not trying to come down on your analysis, just expressing my frustration with these two pickleheads that blew up the 2019 Mets.

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, none of those would have been marginal runs.

[Centerfield]

I've heard this before that since closers are involved with high-leverage runs that WAR is not a great measure of their value.



This is great work. And it illustrates a lot of what went wrong this season.



That being said, it's dangerous to think that simply patching up the pen makes us a contender next season. Sure the pen has to be addressed, but the offense was still middle of the pack, and the starting pitching, though strong, has to remain strong. That means bringing back Wheeler (or another top of the rotation guy) and getting a 6th starter/long man that is more serviceable than Chris Flexen.

[Edgy MD]

=Centerfield post_id=23519 time=1570029536 user_id=65]I've heard this before that since closers are involved with high-leverage runs that WAR is not a great measure of their value.]

[Ceetar]

Which is exactly why Diaz is getting a bit of a raw deal perhaps, as he SHOULD HAVE been better than that, because players with those numbers almost always are. Hell, if you're going to use WPA like that, you can almost bank on two more wins for the 2020 Mets off of Diaz being more like the better predictor in fWAR.



but WAR is a counting estimate, so the smaller the sample, the less reliable it is. You know you 'should' get two heads when you flip a coin 4 times, but this time you got zero. It happens.



In my mind the best relievers are the best K guys. Bloops happen. And you want to use your best pitchers when you have the smallest margin for error (Which is why Openers are great, pushes your starter deeper into the game, into higher leverage situations, facing the opponents best guys, only for the second time instead of the third)



If i hadn't watched any of 2019, Diaz would be on my short list for best relievers for 2020

[Edgy MD]

=Ceetar post_id=23528 time=1570040149 user_id=102]Which is exactly why Diaz is getting a bit of a raw deal perhaps, as he SHOULD HAVE been better than that, because players with those numbers almost always are. Hell, if you're going to use WPA like that, you can almost bank on two more wins for the 2020 Mets off of Diaz being more like the better predictor in fWAR.

[Ceetar]

he could preform the exact same way, and 12 more of those long fly balls go a little bit more to CF or a few feet shorter and they're caught and everything is delightful.

[Edgy MD]

That wouldn't be the same way, now, would it?

[Ceetar]

Diaz doesn't really control what happens after the batter hits the ball. He could throw the same thing, and as i posited above, those fly balls could go more dead center and be fly outs. Or be hit fractionally less hard.

[Vic Sage]

no, but he can control whether or not he hangs a slider in the zone, as he did SOOOOO many times in the 9th inning this year.

[Edgy MD]

He could. That could totally happen. Or theoretically, many deep flies that didn't get out last year, would get out this year.



But that's not what we're talking about.

[Frayed Knot]

Quadrupling his HR rate [2.3/9 in 2018 vs 0.6 in 2019] while also upping his hit rate by 80% [9.0 vs 5.0] and his walk rate by over 60% [3.4 vs 2.1] is way beyond merely pitching in bad luck, even if

the K-rate remained virtually unchanged.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Guest

[Ceetar]

Vic Sage wrote: no, but he can control whether or not he hangs a slider in the zone, as he did SOOOOO many times in the 9th inning this year.

arguably he can't. That was the whole thing about the ball this year.

[LWFS]

=Ceetar post_id=23538 time=1570044893 user_id=102]
Diaz doesn't really control what happens after the batter hits the ball. He could throw the same thing, and as i posited above, those fly balls could go more dead center and be fly outs. Or be hit fractionally less hard.

[Edgy MD]

Mercy.

[Centerfield]

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSye10_CAfYhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSye10_CAfY[/YOUTUBE]



Watch these highlights of 2018 Diaz, in particular the strikeouts on his slider. Not once did we see movement like that in 2019. His slider starts out in the zone then falls off a table. Couple that with his rising fastball and the hitter is up there in a guessing game.



His slider in 2019 was flat and missed its spots. When you have a two-pitch pitcher, the margin is razor thin to begin with. I think this is why you see so such variation from year to year with relief pitchers. When those two pitches are both thrown hard, with little speed differential, that margin gets even thinner.



When a player struggles it's always a combination of factors. Maybe the league just figured out how to attack a two-pitch guy. Maybe his location was off, maybe some of it is in his head and maybe some more of it was bad luck. But here, it's clearly his slider. If he finds it (ball goes back to normal or whatever) he'll be fine. If it stays like this he'll be Kane Davis.



Which brings us back to my point about the changeup. deGrom turned his season around once he realized his slider wasn't what it once was and started using his changeup effectively. If Diaz can learn to mix in a changeup, he'll be more effective, even if he can't recover his slider. And if he has all three, he'll be out of this world.



But not everyone can just learn a new pitch. We'll have to see.

[Edgy MD]

I saw plenty of movement on his slider. People chased it when it was two feet outside. To my eyes it was his fastball that was getting crushed.



I agree about the changeup.

[Ceetar]

I mean, that's generally how it goes. You can't command the slider so you have to throw fastballs which are almost always 'straighter'.



9 HR on the fastball, 6 on the slider ( up from 3 in 2018)



He got more whiffs with his fastball, more Ks, than 2018. Because he threw it more.



his BB% on the slider was exactly the same, but his K% went from 56.4% to 35.9. PutAway% from 37.3% to 25.2%.



He lost some vertical movement on the fastball too, about an inch, taking it from above average to slightly worse than average, which I guess is probably enough for that few feet of HR distance and the 4 mph EV.



I'm not a pitching coach, so what's this all mean? Why was he getting so many less Ks on a slider that seemingly was the same? The issue seems to be one of location more than anything else. He just couldn't keep the slider DOWN. Lots more in the zone, especially down and away to lefties/in and down to righties. In 2018 he threw 3.85% slides in the center of the zone, and 10.57% in 2019. to Righties. He just couldn't get it down. This is starting to feel to me more mechanical than just ball composition (though that certainly made the problem go from "he's not that good", to "he's bad")