Seattle’s secret weapon?
Fireballing Edwin Diaz has risen from Class AA this season to give the Mariners a potential difference-maker out of the bullpen, if they can reach October.
With two weeks to go in the regular season, half the major league teams were either in playoff position or within four games of one of each league’s two wild-card slots. These are precarious times for contenders, as games take on extra weight, each win or loss potentially decisive.
USA TODAY Sports special correspondent Mark Whicker catches up with Edwin Diaz, whose power right arm could be a difference-maker down the stretch and in October, if the Seattle Mariners qualify. We also look at two other contenders, one feeling the burn of the pennant race, the other in line to get in but posturing to keep pitchers fresh and at maximum efficiency.
The advocates of a shorter baseball season are not getting much support from the Seattle Mariners.
At least for one year, the Mariners would prefer a stay of execu- tion. Maybe even a Chase system like NASCAR has. They have just begun to hit top speed.
On Aug. 1 the Mariners were 52-52. On Sept. 14 they were 78-68. Then they lost twice at home to the Houston Astros, which left them three games outside the wild-card spots.
They have six road games left and close the season with four home games against the Oakland Athletics, although the A’s just extinguished the Kansas City Royals with a three-game sweep.
But the Mariners might be better equipped than anyone to slog through the wild-card underbrush and make a real run in the American League playoffs.
The newest reason is a 22-yearold who was hiding in plain sight this spring.
Edwin Diaz dropped out of the sky and into the ninth inning. He began the season in the Jackson (Tenn.) Generals Class AA rotation. As the Mariners’ short relievers kept struggling, the brass decided Diaz’s high-90s fastball would be more effective late than early. The Mariners converted him to relief in Jackson, watched him flourish, then called him up June 5.
Diaz’s statistics look as illogical as lottery numbers. Through Sunday he had 77 strikeouts in 45 innings. He had walked only 15 and had saved 16 games in 17 tries.
The only blemish was a tworun ninth inning by the Texas Rangers on Aug. 30, when Rougned Odor slammed a tworun homer.
“When he comes into the game now, we sense that it’s our win,” says Mike Hampton, the two-time All-Star left-hander who is the Mariners bullpen coach.
“That’s the way you should feel about every closer. For a young guy, he stays loose down there, until you get to the seventh or eighth. Then he gets locked in, which is perfect.”
Diaz’s first save was against the
Boston Red Sox on Aug. 2. From that point through Sept. 17, he had thrown 20 innings, with 11 hits and 29 strikeouts. In seven of those 16 saves he threw fewer than 10 pitches.
Diaz got his chance when closer Steve Cishek injured his hip, but the Mariners were seeking alternatives. Their bullpen had suffered 22 losses and blown 23 saves, and their WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched) was 1.24, which ranked eighth in the AL.
They already had enough offense to win. Few clubs can match their middle-lineup muscle: Robinson Cano’s 33 homers, 87 RBI and .853 on-base-plus-slugging percentage; Kyle Seager’s 29 homers, 95 RBI and .890 OPS; and Nelson Cruz’s 37 homers, 92 RBI and .901 OPS.
That’s a lot of punch, even without Mark Trumbo and Brad Miller, whom new general manager Jerry Dipoto dealt to the Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Rays, respectively.
The Mariners lead the league with 18 wins in non-quality starts. Felix Hernandez is not having a kingly year, and none of the Mariners’ young arms have been consistent. Maybe one more month of Diaz would make them playoff-worthy.
SUDDEN IMPACT
Diaz was a third-round pick from Puerto Rico and signed for $300,000 in 2012. At the time he was 6-3 and 163 pounds. He still disappears when he turns sideways, but he is sturdy enough to handle this workload.
He had a 1.135 WHIP during his trip through the Mariners system and averaged 9.5 strikeouts per inning. But he was 7-10 with a 3.82 ERA as a starter for high Class A Bakersfield (Calif.) and Jackson in 2015, and Jackson pitching coach Andrew Lorraine pointed him toward the bullpen in May.
“I threw that first inning down there and felt good,” Diaz says. “Then the next day I felt good, too. After a while they said they weren’t going to tell me anymore when I was going to pitch. Just get ready every day.”
Diaz was working on a changeup as a starter, but his primary pitches are that sizzling fastball and a slider that was weaponized with a few tips from reliever Joaquin Benoit and Mariners pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr.
“It was like a cutter before,” Diaz says. “Now it has more depth and more drop after they changed my grip.”
“Once he gets the changeup down totally, he’s really gonna be tough,” Hampton says. “As it is now, he gets you out with fastballs. That thing gets on top of you quicker than you realize. But he also has that slider. If you don’t guess right, you’re going to look pretty silly.”
But did Diaz have the mentality or shoulders broad enough to shrug off the bad times? There haven’t been enough to tell.
“Everybody says these are the three most-difficult outs in the game,” Diaz says. “I get excited about going into those situations. I don’t think much about yesterday. I just turn my head and keep working on it.”
Diaz grew up on youth teams with Carlos Correa, the 2015 American League Rookie of the Year with Houston. “Like a brother to me,” Diaz says.
At 15, the coaches removed Diaz from center field and put him on the mound, which he resisted at first. He got over that when he saw the scouts gathering.
“Everybody said I had too good an arm not to pitch,” he said. “But I liked playing outfield. I wasn’t a great hitter, but I was around .250, .260. Not too bad.”
Now it seems unlikely Diaz will see another first inning. In some ways he has had the sudden impact of Francisco Rodriguez, another highly valued youngster who parachuted into the then-Anaheim Angels’ world in September 2002 and dazzled the league with his setup work. Fourteen years later, Rodriguez is with the Detroit Tigers and the only active reliever with 400 saves. And Diaz looks the part far better than Rodriguez did.
“The looseness of his arm was the thing I noticed initially,” Hampton says. “It’s explosive, and he also has the ability to spray one up and in, just to keep the guys little scared.
“I still think those last three outs are like a game-winning 47-yard field goal for a placekicker. Anybody early in the game can get it done, but you really don’t know what you’ve got until you see it at the end. And this kid knows how to get warmed up. The call comes down, and he’s going from zero to 100 pretty quick. After only a couple of throws, it’s ready to eat. So when you get an arm like that in the back of the bullpen, I don’t think you’re going to move it.”
Next year it all goes back from 162 to zero and a chance for the Mariners to formally introduce Edwin Diaz to everyone.