Billy Wagner was bothered to hear the Mets’ current closer admitted last weekend to a loss of confidence.
Edwin Diaz blew a third straight save opportunity — allowing four runs in the ninth inning in Miami — and cited his confidence as an issue. Diaz hasn’t pitched since that outing as manager Carlos Mendoza searched for a lower-leverage spot to insert the right-hander during the Mets’ series in Cleveland.
Wagner, whose dominant career (which included four seasons with the Mets) placed him last year on the cusp of election to the Hall of Fame, told Post Sports+ there is a “BS factor” to the job in which a closer has to convince himself he is good enough to succeed, even when there might be self-doubt.
“Confidence comes through success, of course, but as the closer you’re so gifted, you just don’t get the opportunity to go out and say, ‘I’m good or I’m not good,’” Wagner said. “It’s just you have to go perform and … even if I wasn’t good or not confident, I’m not going to tell you. That’s the first thing that’s not going to happen.”
Diaz’s average fastball velocity has dipped from 99 mph in 2022 to 97 mph, but Wagner said that dropoff shouldn’t be a significant factor.
Wagner suspects Diaz has placed too much pressure on himself to repeat the season he had two years ago — which ranked among the greatest all-time for a closer — and that is too heavy of a burden to carry.
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Wagner recalled that after arriving to the Mets through free agency and pitching at a high level for the club in his first season, he was told by first base coach Sandy Alomar Sr. that he wasn’t as dominant as he had been previously with the Phillies. Wagner said he shrugged off Alomar’s assessment.
“I’m sure that [Diaz] is coming back with the thought process, ‘I’m supposed to strike out everybody and be this unhittable thing,’ and don’t we all wish that was the case when we walked out there?” Wagner said. “But he has to work back to it. He doesn’t have that much work [in his career] where it’s, ‘I know what I am.’”
Diaz spent two full seasons as the Mariners closer before he was traded to the Mets, but Wagner said he considers Diaz — who missed last year rehabbing from surgery to repair a torn patellar tendon in his right knee — a relative novice in the sense he is still building up experience on which to draw when he struggles.
“It’s New York,” Wagner said. “That’s the one thing that sticks out. Not that the game has changed [from Seattle], but the attention to what you’re doing has changed. So you’re good only in the eyes of the beholder.”
Wagner endured a stretch of blown saves early in his career with the Astros that he said prompted team brass to evaluate whether his stuff was diminishing. Wagner was sent to visit Nolan Ryan, who in an era before advanced technology was the final word in evaluating a pitcher’s stuff. Wagner met with Ryan at a junior college baseball field near the Hall of Fame right-hander’s home.
“It’s Nolan Ryan watching, so I’m throwing the absolute crap out of the ball to this kid they sent over to catch me,” Wagner said. “I don’t know who this other kid is at all, but Nolan Ryan is watching me, so I’m lighting it up a little bit. The whole thing the Astros were saying was I had lost my stuff. It’s just all the same crap that people like to say.
“That same night, they bring me in against the Dodgers. I give up a run and strike out two, but because Nolan said there was nothing wrong with me, [team brass] said, ‘He’s good. He’s back.’”
Wagner’s hope is that even when self-doubt creeps in, Diaz can easily dismiss it.
“He’s just so good and so electric,” Wagner said. “Sometimes you have to have that BS factor that says, ‘You know, what? I’m good.’”
Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner this week provided an assessment of three of the organization’s young arms at Triple-A Syracuse.
Most notably, there is Blade Tidwell, who debuted for Syracuse on Thursday following his promotion from Double-A Binghamton. The right-hander allowed two earned runs on three hits and four walks over 5 ⅔ innings against Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
He had pitched to a 2.41 ERA over seven appearances for Binghamton.
“[Tidwell] is not getting too high or low based on how he is performing,” Hefner said. “That was kind of his next step, more so the day to day and making sure he’s staying in tune with his process.”
Dom Hamel has struggled for Syracuse, pitching to a 6.48 ERA in eight appearances. The right-hander’s primary issue has been walks — 10 in his past 10 ⅔ innings.
“He’s having some starts where there’s a few more walks than we want, but then there’s some starts he pitches to what we think he can be, striking out guys and getting easy outs and kind of mowing down the lineup,” Hefner said. “For him it’s just consistency: building really good starts over and over again. He’s close.”
Mike Vasil lowered his ERA to 7.97 on Thursday night with what might have been his best start of a challenging campaign for Syracuse: 5 ⅓ innings, two earned runs, six strikeouts and one walk. Hefner said part of the process for Vasil has been adjusting between automated strike zone games and instances when the system isn’t used.
“That’s challenging,” Hefner said.
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The Mets won’t get Francisco Alvarez back for close to another month and much can change before that return, but there is a good chance Omar Narvaez’s time with the organization will conclude when the team has to choose among three catchers for two roster spots.
Tomas Nido is the better backup option, and Narvaez just appears lost, both offensively and defensively.
Narvaez still will be owed close to $4 million when Alvarez returns (provided he remains on schedule in his rehab from left thumb ligament surgery).
But as the team’s release of Joey Wendle showed, the Mets aren’t afraid to eat money to purge underperformers.