Day Thirty Nine: Edwin Diaz

Unfortunately, you can't play baseball without pitchers. And I have had to regularly remind myself that I need to include them in this daily Mariner confessional. As I have said numerous times, pitching sucks. It's no fun. I don't find pitching statistics to be compelling at all. The only pitching stat that has ever made me raise an eyebrow is the utterly arbitrary 300 K's. It is an impressive feat. There have been so many examples of why pitching is bullshit throughout the years. But as a Mariners fan there is a special category for pitching woes. Even our greatest pitcher was such an asshole that he was beyond unapproachable and often times actively spiteful to fans. And the second greatest pitcher regressed into such a humiliatingly sad spectacle of futility his final three or four seasons here that it was brutally painful to watch.

So yeah, I am probably not going to be doing a series on "Best pitching!" any time soon, and to add to my scorn, the most arcane and esoteric and generally devoid of humanity arena of the advanced stats revolution (how can a revolution be something that is done by management to effectively pay workers less?) is in advanced pitching stats. Which I will gladly be old man yelling at Cloud in relation to. There are only so many foolhardy things that can occupy my skull computer and there's already plenty of foolishness without adding in FIP or whatever. I'm good!

But sometimes things work out correctly for the fans. And the time that we spent with Sugar was correct. And he is a pitcher that will always live in my heart with warmth and tenderness. And great relief!

Edwin Diaz came up to the bigs with firepower. It's easy to forget that Edwin just turned 26 this year. It seems like he's been in the league for a lot longer than that. Perhaps it was because he was immediately so effective. Right away in 2016 he was lights out. It had been a while (Goddamn Fernando Rodney) since we had seen a lights out closer in Seattle and it was a welcome sight. For those first two years of 16 and 17 he was spectacular. And then in 18 he put together one of the best pure closer seasons you are likely to see. He was unhittable. Every time he came in you just knew that Sugar was going to throw some serious thunder past the opposition. The Mariners almost made the playoffs in 2018 and won 90 games for the first time since 2003 and it is pretty much solely because of Edwin Diaz. There are so many numbers that show how illusory the Mariners success of 2018 actually was, and a great deal of those numbers are the reason that Edwin had such huge counting stats. They were constantly tied or winning by just a few runs. The 2018 Mariners had a Pythagorean win total of 77-85. They had a negative run differential. Take these stats with a healthy grain of salt. Numbers said that the 2011 Cardinals were crap, and the 2014 Royals, and quite a few other teams in post-Numbers algorithmic baseball, and those teams made the playoffs and won stuff. If the Mariners had made the playoffs in 2018 they could have made a push deep into the playoffs. In fact, they would have gone exactly as far as Edwin Diaz could take them. Because that is exactly as far as they went in the regular season. He was that good.

And he would have been that good in October too. Of that I am convinced. But when the offseason rolled around, as much as I enjoyed (or tolerated perhaps lol) seeing Edwin work I knew that signing relievers to bigass contracts is the kiss of death. It is just always the wrong move. So when Jerry Dipoto was able to lure the Mets into taking the corpse of Robinson Cano by including Edwin Diaz I was thrilled. It was an amazing trade. It is the best trade that the Mariners have pulled off in a very long time. Quite honestly it was shocking. The Mariners never get to do stuff like that anymore. Unload an albatross and a vial of mercury for a possibility? Oh hell yes! It was amazing. I am still filled with wonder that it got done. Cano was exactly who he was his last year (and I would argue always. Robinson Cano is a fucking bum) with the Mariners in 2019 and he is probably super pumped not to have to pretend to play baseball this year.

Unfortunately for young Edwin Diaz, the truth of being a big league reliever (place kicker) was actualized. He was utterly terrible in 2019. I really hope that he gets his shit together for 2021 and has an excellent year, but for right now his last year as a pro was rugged. And I really do hope for his success, and for the success of all pitchers. But I also hope for the end of capitalism and the abolition of the nation state.

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