Van Wagenen still sees Díaz when he visits Citi Field, offering friendly encouragement, and said he admires the way Díaz persevered through their shared frustration of 2019. It took a while - and a lot of dollars wasted on Canó - but the logic behind the trade has prevailed. 167 in 500 major league plate appearances and is currently at Class AAA, and Dunn has a 5.12 E.R.A. The other standouts of the trade have faded: Canó, 39, missed the 2021 season after his second positive test for performance-enhancing drugs, and was released this season by the Mets, Atlanta and San Diego.
and his teammate Joaquin Benoit - throwing across the seams with his index and middle fingers, his thumb hugging a seam underneath - he became a star. He threw harder in relief, he said, and when he learned a new slider grip from the coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr. But to recognize that slider, you can’t do it.”ĭíaz adapted so quickly that he skipped Class AAA on his way to the majors. They’re going to throw a heater and throw a slider off it. “Those are the two best pitches in the game: a 100 mile-an-hour fastball and a 90-plus mile-an-hour slider that looks like a fastball,” Lugo said. Their sliders do not sweep from right to left - think of the Mets’ Adam Ottavino today, or the former Yankee setup man Jeff Nelson - but they throw so hard that the pitch holds the plane of a fastball until the very end of its journey. Lugo compared Díaz to starter Jacob deGrom in his style of pitching. A fellow Mets reliever, the right-hander Seth Lugo, said Díaz has preserved his mechanics through meticulous work: In the middle innings, he practices his delivery on a bullpen mound without throwing the ball, and plays catch with the same purpose. This is really Díaz’s third strong season in a row since the start of 2020, he has held opponents to a. So we talked a lot about being a little bit more top-to-bottom and getting on top of the ball - all the things we’ve been talking about in baseball for a hundred years - and that helped him.” “But if you get too rotational, that’s when you get the arm-side misses, and you can’t get the slider to the glove side. “He’s real rotational, and rotation is power, so that’s why he’s able to throw as hard as he can,” Hefner said.
Díaz knew that most fans, back then, wanted a do-over on the deal. Kelenic and Dunn thrived in Seattle’s minor league system, earning spots at the All-Star Futures Game, while Canó was ordinary and Díaz flopped. The Mets did have a winning record in 2019, at 86-76, but they never seriously contended. So our thought process was that we should be able to compete in the next three to four years, with the players we were getting in return.” “Our evaluation was that most of those prospects we moved - regardless of the quality of the players - would not be making a great impact in the 2019, ’20 or ’21 seasons. “Prospects are valuable, but at the same point, the mode in which we were at as an organization, heading into the 2019 season, and the way in which the expectations are for that franchise in the city - there’s an expectation to win. “I think we all, in the industry, have to have perspective that trades aren’t measured in a day,” said Van Wagenen, who was fired in November 2020 and is now the chief operating officer for Roc Nation Sports.
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