BEYOND BELIEF Diaz eager to make his long-awaited Citi return
Mendoza, Amazin's expect to win, surpass expectations for 2024
The Mets could not bottle the Florida weather and bring it north, hoods and long sleeves all over the field on a chilly, overcast Wednesday afternoon.
But Carlos Mendoza’s group did pack the same optimism that permeated the clubhouse in Port St. Lucie. A team that enters this season with a much less starry roster than the past few years and correspondingly low expectations is aware of those expectations — and believes it can surpass them.
“Our expectation is to win. We’re here to win,” Mendoza said after a workout at Citi Field ahead of an Opening Day matchup against the Brewers that will be Friday because of rain in Thursday’s forecast. “I’ve been saying it all along: Outside projections and things like that might say differently, but we do believe that we have a really good team. I don’t buy the fact that expectations are low for the New York Mets in 2024. Regardless of what happened here last year, this is a very talented team. We’re here to win.”
Mendoza was across town with the Yankees when the 2023 Mets, a team that expected to be a World Series contender with Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, disappointed across four months before holding a sell-off at the trade deadline.
Both aces dealt with injury, and the rotation replacements proved to be a weakness. A lineup that projected to be a strength was middling, with downturns notably from Starling Marte and
Jeff McNeil. The bullpen might have been the club’s worst unit, the loss of Edwin Diaz looming over the entire season.
“This is completely different this year,” said Opening Day starter Jose Quintana, who did not debut last season until mid-July because of a stress fracture in his rib. “We have a lot of talent in here. This is the perfect time to start to show them.”
Quintana is healthy, but this year’s ace again will be absent for at least the first six weeks or so of the season. Kodai Senga will be sidelined with a shoulder strain, though he has resumed throwing and can begin lengthening out his arm. Tylor Megill will fill the rotation spot, and Quintana (and perhaps Luis Severino) will need to perform like an ace.
David Stearns’ first offseason as Mets president was designed to improve the team’s defense, and maybe the presence of Harrison Bader, who has pushed Brandon Nimmo to left field, will save enough runs to matter.
But with the club’s rotation a question even before Senga’s injury, the Mets’ clearest path to the postseason might be several bounce-backs offensively. McNeil, the 2022 batting champ, saw his average plunge by 56 points last year. Pete Alonso hit .217. Marte was a mess offensively and defensively after offseason groin surgery.
Mendoza, looking with fresh eyes at the group in his first year as manager, believes the offense can again be a strength.
“When you look at our lineup, top to bottom, we got not only versatility but guys who can do damage,” Mendoza said of a group that eventually will include J.D. Martinez at DH. “We can beat you a lot of different ways. Whether it’s running the bases, putting the ball in play, hitting the ball in the seats.”
The Mets will begin this season with less external belief and more Diaz. Perhaps the best closer in the game is fully recovered from the patellar tendon tear suffered during the World Baseball Classic and provides an anchor that the Mets desperately missed last season.
Diaz is happy to be back and also thinks the team can surprise.
“I like everything [about this team],” Diaz said. “I like the energy in the clubhouse. I like everything. I think we got a really good team. … I think we got a chance to make the playoffs.”
The postseason was mentioned, but no one publicly cited the World Series as the goal, which is a departure from this time last season.
Francisco Lindor acknowledged there are “not as many big names” and “not as many players making that much money” this year. His own expectations?
“Win. Win,” Lindor repeated. “I expect that.”
THE hardest part was the helplessness, the inability to do anything to keep the wheels from spinning completely off. That was what made Edwin Diaz hurt, even more than the hard rehab sessions on his right knee, even more than the moment when the ligament inside that knee blew up inside Miami’s loanDepot Park last March 15.
Sometimes Diaz would get an upclose look, when he would make periodic trips to New York, and he would easily recognize the frustration on teammates’ faces because that’s exactly what he was feeling. Sometimes it was from a distance, putting in the quiet hours of healing in Port. St. Lucie.
Always, it was gnawing.
“I’m a guy who likes to help the team to win,” Diaz said at Citi Field Wednesday, not long before the Mets acceded to the foul weather report and moved Opening Day to Friday. “Being out a year, sitting in the clubhouse, seeing them play without me, that was rough. I was supporting them as much as I could be. I really wanted to help the team to win.”
It’s why if there was one person in the Mets’ universe who was probably unfazed by the postponement, it was Diaz. What’s one more day? By the time he gets his first chance to pitch — best-case scenario, somewhere around 4 o’clock Friday afternoon — it’ll be 380 days since he tore up the knee celebrating the final out of a 5-2 win that pushed Puerto Rico past the Dominican Republic in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.
It’ll be 537 days since he last threw a ball in anger as a Met, a 99 mph BB that San Diego’s Manny Machado took for a strike in Game 3 of the 2022 wild-card series, before Tomas Nido thew out Juan Soto stealing. The Mets were already trailing 6-0, and would lose that series to the Padres, so there was little that was festive in the yard that night.
It’ll be different the next time Diaz jogs in from the bullpen because not only will Timmy Trumpet’s familiar notes to “Narco” greet him, so will newly installed LED lights. It’ll certainly make for an epic entrance for night games. But even if the sun is blinding on Friday, Diaz is likely to have a full course of adrenaline surging if he’s summoned. It’s been that long.
“I’ll feel chills,” he said. “But I also
know I have to do my job.”
It was easy to overlook just what a calamitous moment it was for the Mets last year when Diaz was carried off the field in Miami, the cameras capturing he and his kid brother, Alexis, weeping together. So much of the next three months consisted of uninterrupted disaster for the Mets, from Opening Day right till the tag-sale trade deadline.
And even if Diaz had followed up his breakout 2022 season with a season that crossed Tug McGraw with Mariano Rivera, there’s only so much a closer can do when everything else goes wrong. After a while, it was actually easy to
forget about Diaz, even as he kept hoping against hope for the Mets to make a miracle run that would’ve made a September comeback feasible.
Instead, Diaz focused on getting stronger, on eating healthier, and biding his time for 2024. But it is also important to remember just how remarkable he was in 2022, after three less-than-stellar years. His stuff was always electric. In ’22 he harnessed it, alternating easy 100 mph gas with a slider that looked like a tricked-out Wiffle ball.
The result was a 3-1 record, 32 saves, 118 strikeouts in 62 innings, an otherworldly WHIP of 0.839, good
for ninth place in the Cy Young voting and 19th in MVP. Beyond that was the energy in the ballpark and the nightly confidence his availability meant to his teammates.
“He’s one of most electric pitchers and having him back to close game will be great,” said Francisco Lindor, who was on the field the night Diaz was hurt. “Whenever you have a closer of that caliber you play for eight innings then here comes Edwin, you expect nine to 12 pitches and we’re out.”
It’s a comforting tool for a firsttime manager, too.
“Pretty cool,” Carlos Mendoza said. “Managing a game, knowing he’s available for the ninth is a different feeling.”
And after a year of hibernation? It’s a different feeling for Diaz, too.