Amid the Mets’ modest hot streak, a theme: Their relievers are providing relief again.
For so much of the season, particularly during a miserable May, their bullpen wasn’t so much leaky as it was downright gushing, a rotating cast of guys in the habit of blowing it. Edwin Diaz was ineffective and then injured, Adam Ottavino wilted after early dominance, and Brooks Raley was gone and almost nobody was stepping up.
But as if all of a sudden, including during a 2-1 win over the Padres at Citi Field on Friday night, the bullpen is back.
Adam Ottavino (five outs), Jake Diekman (one), Sean Reid-Foley (three) and Edwin Diaz combined for four practically perfect innings to close out the Mets’ third consecutive win.
Diaz, pitching for a second day in a row in his return from the injured list, recorded his first save since May 6. After allowing a leadoff single and a stolen base, putting the potential tying run at second with no outs, Diaz dialed in: Manny Machado struck out looking, Donovan Solano grounded out (via a sliding stop by Jeff McNeil) and Jake Cronenworth struck out swinging.
Diaz’s second pitch to Cronenworth, a ball well above the zone, was his first time touching 100 mph this season.
Mets relievers have a 2.81 ERA this month, a top-third mark in the majors and a major reason they havewon nine of theirpast 13 games.
Compare that to May: 4.88, among the worst in baseball.
And April, when the Mets were decent: 2.85.
As the relievers go, so go the Mets.
All of the Mets’ offense came from J.D. Martinez, who followed up his walk-off home run on Thursday with a two-run double off Matt Waldron in the bottom of the third. Jeff McNeil (walk) and Brandon Nimmo (single) were on base with two outs when Martinez lined Waldron’s fastball on the outer third of the plate into the rightfield corner.
That was all the Mets managed, however, off Waldron, a rookie righthander who uses a knuckleball as his primary pitch — making him a rarity in the modern major-league landscape.
Waldron pitched seven innings and allowedtwo runs, three hits and two walks.
Lefthander Sean Manaea navigated five innings (plus one batter) and allowed a lone run, scattering four hits and a walk. He struck out seven.
The Padres’ first hitter of the game, two-time batting champion Luis Arraez, snuck a single up the middle. But San Diego didn’t score until the fifth, when Jackson Merrill eked a two-out home run over the centerfield wall.
With a slim lead in the middle innings, manager Carlos Mendoza was aggressive with his bullpen, yanking Manaea (90 pitches) after Arraez singled again to begin the sixth.
Manaea had faltered in his previous two outings, allowing six runs in each, including a late-start meltdown in the latter. Instead of risking the same this time, Mendoza turned to Ottavino, who tossed the next 1 2/3 innings.
Nimmo finished 2-for-3, reaching base three times including a hit by pitch. Those were hits first hits of the homestand amid an unusually deep slump that has left him searching for answers.
“It’s kind of weird how it all started,” Nimmo said before the game. “You can have a start point from when I got sick to really, really good before and not great after. Just had a few things snowball. I don’t know if I developed bad habits where I got sick, then my shoulder was bothering me a little bit — not to the point of being out of games, but maybe to the point of maybe altering the swing a little bit. Then my hand started bothering me a little bit.
“So then you’re like, OK, did I make — subconsciously — too much of little adjustments that now have snowballed into bigger things? Then getting hit in the head, but I checked out well on all the tests and I feel fine. I’m not trying to use any of that for an excuse. And now it’s just like, OK, so where did we go wrong? How do I fix that?”
By Tim Healey
timothy.healey@newsday.com
@timbhealeyTim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
