Diaz makes strong debut; Dom bomb starts hit parade JAKE PACKS HEAT!
DeGrom hits 100 mph in spring debut, tabbed for 3rd straight Opening Day start
WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. — Edwin Diaz didn’t treat his Grapefruit League debut like a meaningless exhibition game that will have no impact on his 2021 statistics. Instead, he approached his first outing of the year like it was go-time.
“I’m taking this game pretty much as the start of the regular season,” Diaz said, through interpreter Alan Suriel, on his scoreless inning Saturday. “I’ve already had three live BPs, which I’ve used as practice. But right now my mentality is that this is a regular-season game.”
The Mets would be impressed if Diaz could pitch in the regular season like he did on Saturday. The closer hurled an effortless seven-pitch outing with a strikeout and two solid plays from shortstop Francisco Lindor that ended the third inning. He looked confident and raring to go for more, as manager Luis Rojas called his first appearance of spring “outstanding.”
Diaz appreciated the help he received from Lindor, particularly on a lineout from Jose Altuve that sailed straight into the shortstop’s glove. Lindor made a similar play with deGrom on the mound in the first inning.
“It feels good to have him behind me,” Diaz said of Lindor. “It gives me a little bit of comfort having him behind me just because he’s one of the best shortstops in the game… He’ll be able to make the play and he’ll give 100 percent every single time he’s out there.”
Diaz said he plans to use the same entrance music this season that he did in 2020 — when he recorded a 1.75 ERA over 26 games — because it helps him stay motivated and energetic. His warmup song, “Narco by Blasterjaxx & Timmy Trumpet, begins with a subtle trumpet solo before it cranks into a catchy, and powerful, electronic drop. Diaz said he used “Narco” to warmup during his successful seasons in 2017 and ‘18 in Seattle and, so far, the song has given him the same results.
“My pitches feel good,” Diaz said. “I feel like I’m ready to go into the regular season the way that I am right now.”
DOM BOMB
Dominic Smith, in just his fifth at-bat of spring training, launched a solo shot onto the berm in right field to leadoff the fourth inning. It was his first home run of the 2021 Grapefruit League, and he enjoyed it as a DH on Saturday. Rojas said Smith will start playing more left field once he gets some at-bats in at the plate.
“It’s nice to see Dom’s sweet swing,” Rojas said. “He stayed on that one today so he can do what he does. Drive the ball — quiet, sweet, swing that he has.”
Smith’s dinger got the rest of the lineup fired up in the fourth inning. James McCann, who already crushed a double in the second inning, lined a single to center in his 2-for-3 day. Kevin Pillar ripped an RBI single to score McCann, and the Mets’ fourth outfielder also worked a solid at-bat that resulted in a walk in the second.
FUTURE IS NOW
Pete Crow-Armstrong, the Mets’ top outfield prospect who is enjoying life on a big-league club as a teenager, notched his first professional baseball hit in the Mets’ 6-1 win over the Astros on Saturday. Crow-Amstrong, 18, ripped a stand-up triple into right field, lost his helmet somewhere around second base and easily trotted into third.
The speedy centerfielder has gained more confidence throughout his Grapefruit League experience, and Rojas has enjoyed the patience Crow-Armstrong has shown in his at-bats.
Fellow Mets prospect, shortstop Ronny Mauricio, moments later scored Crow-Armstrong on a single to right. Mauricio, only 19 years old, could make his Major League debut as soon as next season. He ranks as the team’s No. 1 overall prospect in its newly-refreshed farm system.
“Mauricio has looked really mature,” Rojas said. “This kid is turning into a man right now. And this great experience is making him better.”
Other Mets prospects, including newcomer Khalil Lee who joined the Mets last month as part of a three-team trade with the Red Sox and Royals, also made appearances in Saturday’s game. Outfielder Lee, the Mets’ No. 7 overall prospect, worked a walk and Mark Vientos was deployed at first base.
“I’m really excited,” Rojas said of the work his prospects are putting into exhibition games. “They’re all coachable. You can approach them in a game. It’s just been great to have them.”
WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. — Jacob deGrom remembered to bring the heat when he packed for the team’s travel day. The ace, making his Grapefruit League debut in the rain-shortened Mets’ 6-1 win over the Astros on Saturday, ended his scoreless two-inning outing with a pair of strikeouts that touched 99 and 100 mph on the radar gun. When all was done, deGrom gave up one hit and a walk with three strikeouts over 29 pitches. He stepped off the mound with a warm ovation from the large pack of Mets fans in attendance on Houston’s turf — including his own son, Jaxon Anthony deGrom, who waved at his dad as he entered the dugout.
DeGrom credited the whiffs to homing in on his fastball location with James McCann, who caught the righthander Saturday for the first time in a game.
DeGrom switched up his pitch mix after he gave up a double to Abraham Toro on his slider. Nearly a month into camp for deGrom and McCann, the pitcher feels comfortable with the battery they’ve formed.
“We were talking after that double I gave up,” deGrom said of his quick chat on the mound with McCann. “He was like, ‘Hey,
nobody is on time on the fastball.’ So we stuck with that and really worked on locating it.”
Manager Luis Rojas confirmed on Saturday what fans likely already knew: deGrom will make his third straight Opening Day start on April 1 against the Nationals in Washington D.C.
Only two Mets pitchers have had a longer streak than deGrom. Tom Seaver received the nod for 10 consecutive Opening Day starts, and Dwight Gooden pitched four straight. This year, deGrom will be tied with Johan
Santana for third-most Opening Day streaks.
“Any time that you get the nod for Opening Day, it’s a huge honor,” deGrom said. “I go out there and try to have fun and compete to the best of my ability. The main thing is having fun playing this game. When you’re mentioned with guys like that, it truly is an honor.”
DeGrom still has four more Grapefruit League starts before he opens the regular season. In that time, he plans to continue working on the fastball location of his four-seamer instead of his two-seamer, the latter of which he has completely ditched from his arsenal following an entertaining at-bat against Michael Conforto in live batting practice.
Last week, on Conforto’s birthday, deGrom urged the right fielder to step in the box even though he wasn’t on the list to face him.
“I said, ‘Conforto, what, you want your birthday off? You’re not going to come out there and try to face me?’ And he gave me a little humble pie there,” deGrom said, smiling.
Conforto hit two home runs off deGrom, the first one off his two-seam fastball. DeGrom said three of his last four two-seamers have gone out of the park, so he “quit throwing it.” After Conforto hit the first homer, something he the right fielder believes he has never done off deGrom across six years of live BP, he started jogging off the field and to the clubhouse as a joke. But deGrom wasn’t done yet. He said to Conforto: “Get back in here one more time.”
Conforto reluctantly stepped back into the box. He thought he worked a walk off deGrom, but the extremely competitive ace didn’t let him take first base. So Conforto jumped on the next pitch, a slider, and crushed it out of the park again.
“He was just working on some stuff,” Conforto said, modestly, of deGrom’s pitches he drove out of the yard. “I didn’t get his 98-99100 like we saw today.”
Rojas, who didn’t watch the matchup in person, said he heard from others that the at-bat was “heated.”
“Heated? I might’ve been heated,” deGrom said. “I don’t know if Conforto was.”
We have been reminded this season, an NBA season that has arrived at All-Star Weekend, that this is still a Knicks town. It doesn’t change the fact that this is the Nets’ time. The Knicks have made a big move, without question. Not as big as the Nets can make the rest of the way.
This isn’t about whether or not the Nets can own New York when it comes to pro basketball. They’re not going to do that, even if they win it all this season, or next; if it all works out like gangbusters in the playoffs for James Harden and Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. As big as a title would be for them, it wouldn’t be as big as the Knicks winning another one someday, whenever someday might be. Even with all the failures of the Knicks in this century, there is still just too much history attached to them, too much romance, too much memory from people of an age about a team as loved as any we’ve ever had in New York, the Knicks of Clyde and Earl and Willis and DeBusschere and Bradley. All that jazz.
This is what my dear old friend Pete Axthelm wrote of the old Knicks in his masterpiece, “The City Game”:
“The New York Knickerbockers, champions of the National Basketball Association, are not direct products of the city’s playgrounds…..Geographically and socially, they could hardly have more diverse backgrounds. The coach, Red Holzman, was a pure New York ballplayer; the captain, Willis Reed, is from the Black rural South. The other stars include black products of city streets and the white son of a bank president. Yet as they rose to the summit of basketball, the Knicks became inextricably identified with the city they represented.
“The media, based largely in New York, fell in love with the Knicks and with basketball, giving the sport its first taste of heavy television coverage, national magazine cover stories, and all forms of advertising and promotions. New York’s rich citizens also joined the love affair……and in the playgrounds too responded to the Knicks, acknowledging that a New York team was at last bringing a rare playground art to new levels of perfection.”
It was a half-century ago that the old Knicks last exhibited that art in full, with the second of their two titles in 1973. Somehow, though, all of what Ax described held, even through almost Biblical basketball misery starting after the 2000 season. The Nets are something to see. They are probably the best New York basketball team in a quarter-century, since the 1996-97 Knicks, who I believe were on their way to a championship until Charlie Ward and P.J. Brown got into a fight one night at old Miami Arena, and the suspensions that followed effectively ended the Knicks dreams about another title, and their season.
Now the Knicks are back, led by an unlikely All-Star named Julius Randle, having the season of his life, and coached by Tom Thibodeau, who once sat next to Jeff Van Gundy, the Knicks head coach who was on his way to the title in ’97; who watched as half his team got suspended and Patrick Ewing didn’t get to play what should have been a closeout Game 6 at the Garden that year. The Knicks are over .500 again on an All-Star weekend, and making their fans think they have somehow been struck by lightning. You know what the Garden would sound like this spring if they could still fill the place up with fans.
But with everything the Knicks have done, and the noise they might even make if they make the playoffs, the Nets have made themselves a team to watch, and not just around here. This isn’t about the way James Harden strong-armed his way to Brooklyn. This is about the way he has played since he got there, and the way he has played since he got there has made him look like as much a force in the Eastern Conference as LeBron James still is in the Western.
The road is wide-open for them to go full-throttle. So much can change over the second half of the season, but what fan of the NBA isn’t already thinking about what it would be like to watch Harden and Durant and Irving, if they’re all healthy when the post-season begins, go up against the Joel Embiid and the 76ers in the Eastern Conference Finals. Who wouldn’t sign up for that, the way Harden is playing right now for the Nets and the way Embiid – 40 points and 19 rebounds the other nights – is playing for Doc Rivers in Philly?
There is a Manchester City vibe to the Nets, because of the way modern Man City just spent their way to the top of the Premier League. So the Nets signed Durant, one of the great players of all time, as a free agent, and signed Kyrie, and then traded for Harden. Durant, coming back from that Achilles injury, has barely played more than half the Nets’ games. Maybe it won’t be until the playoffs that we see what the Nets are like when all three of its stars are trying to make it all work when the games matter the most. Maybe then we’ll find out if the Nets, who started out the season stopping nobody on defense, might find enough stops to get themselves a shot at the title.
Even though the East is not as deep or as formidable as the West, the Nets have still played themselves to within a half-game of first place, behind the 76ers, at the break. And as much noise as they’ve made, guess what? They are only five games ahead of the Knicks in the loss column. And the Heat are starting to play again. The Celtics, after some slob performances, showed some signs of life right before All-Star Weekend.
The Nets can’t beat the
Knicks when it comes to history, or romance, and that’s even if you include their history with Doctor J in the ABA. The Nets aren’t ever going to own New York the way the Knicks still do. They have only been in Brooklyn for nine years. But they have made themselves one of the biggest stories in their sport. They have made this a two-team season in New York City. For the first time in a long time, the NBA season in New York is something more than the bridge from football to baseball.
This isn’t the kind of high basketball art in the city game about which Pete Axthelm once wrote so beautifully. But it will do for now. For this one half-season, the good old days suddenly feel like now.
From his first shot inside the gym, Julius Randle, for example, is identified by computerized facial recognition. His shots are tagged and uploaded for real-time analysis, accessible from a phone.
If Randle’s shot is missing too far to the left, the system picks up the trend. If there’s a depth problem, Randle and the Knicks staff have the data to coach and adjust accordingly.
It sounds like a futuristic FBI tracking method, but it’s also the high-tech reality inside the Knicks practice facility.
Coach Tom Thibodeau’s squad recently installed the “Noah Basketball Shot Tracking System” above six baskets at its practice facility in Tarrytown, making it the NBA’s most equipped team with this analytical tool. Approximately half the league’s teams use the system, according to John Carter, the CEO of Noah Basketball.
But none installed as many cameras as the Knicks.
“I could tell early on in our meeting the Knicks were committed to player development,” Carter told the Daily News. “And committed to do everything they could to improve their team. I’ve been really impressed with the Knicks organization.”
The potential benefits of the system are easy to identify, especially for an organization that has embraced analytics and beefed up its staff in that department. But since the cameras were only recently installed about 10 feet above the back boards, the data will probably be more complete and useful in the offseason.
“They will have a treasure trove of data to know exactly what a player needs to work on,” Carter said. “Does a player have a left-right consistency problem? Do they have a trajectory problem? Do they have a depth problem? Are they a lot better off the dribble or catch-and-shoot? So there’s a lot of things like that we will be able to provide them as they go into the offseason.”
Carter emphasized shooting consistency — “in other words, the ability to shoot the ball straight” — as a tool to determine issues and even a players’ talent/upside. It can be utilized during pre-draft workouts for prospects, bolstering the intel and giving the Knicks further reason to extend invitations to Tarrytown.
“We’re pretty good (at identifying potential). Nothing’s perfect. You can’t tell how hard a player is going to work and all those things,” Carter said. “But I always joke with people, they say defense travels, all these other coach’s sayings you hear. But left-right consistency, the ability to shoot the ball straight, that travels — from the high school 3-point line, to the college 3-point line, to the NBA 3-point line. And it’s the hardest thing to correct. So if a player has poor mechanics, they’re not going to shoot the ball straight consistently. My feeling on that is the left-right consistency is a combination of talent and mechanics. Sometimes guys have perfect mechanics, but they still can’t shoot the ball straight because they’re not as talented.”
Carter said he hopes to have 20 of the NBA’s 30 teams working with the Noah system by the summer. A “few hundred” college programs are currently customers, he added, including the NCAA champion Virginia Cavaliers. Raptors coach Nick Nurse touted the system as key to fixing the trajectory to Kyle Lowry’s jumper.
The basketball world has been welcoming analytics rapidly and this is an advanced tool.
“I’ve been at this a while,” Carter said. “The reception I got a decade ago versus the reception we get today is quite different.”
Still, the CEO emphasized that he’s not out to snatch coaching jobs. There are limitations to computers.
“At the end of the day we’re not going to tell a guy how to hold the ball, not going to tell him his balance is off,” Carter said. “Those guys who still are a big part of what we do. Because they’re the ones who know how to communicate to that player.”