Diaz and the Drill Sergeant

A day later, there was no wackiness, no crazy reversals, and a fairly simple narrative. And you know what? That was just fine.

The rain threatened to play havoc with Clay Holmes‘ preparation and our afternoon plans, but Holmes persevered through two delays and I presume most of us did too — the only guy who looked worse for wear was the luckless member of the Nats groundskeeping squad who went down beneath the tarp drum or whatever they call the part of the tarp that isn’t the tarp.

Holmes was as good as he’s been in a Mets uniform, generating ground ball after ground ball; meanwhile the Mets’ lone bit of offense came on a Francisco Alvarez slice down the right-field line that everyone seemed to assume would go foul until it tucked itself inside the pole for a home run and a 2-0 Met lead.

The cliche is that it was “all the Mets would need,” and numerically I suppose that’s true. But it didn’t feel that way, not with the lead dangerously skinny and the ghosts of Friday night rattling their chains in our psyches. The Mets needed a lot more; the question was if they’d get it.

What they did get was superb relief work from Danny Young (who’s gone from back-of-the-pen suspect to reasonably trusted in a flash) and an effective though mildly nerve-wracking inning from Reed Garrett. But the plan went awry when A.J. Minter departed after a single batter, felled by tightness in his triceps. He’s basically been sent to the IL even before the MRI, which is not ideal; neither was pressing poor Max Kranick into emergency service once again.

Kranick came through, as he so often has — it feels like a million years ago that he was a postseason ghost and seemingly destined to be a trivia question. But the Mets stubbornly refused to add a precious run or two and handed the ball to Edwin Diaz, who these days comes with a whole undead army of chain-rattling phantoms.

Diaz fanned Luis Garcia Jr. but then walked Keibert Ruiz on four pitches, and the body language wasn’t great. Which was when Alvarez decided to go on offense in the service of defense. Remember how Rene Rivera used to excel at coaxing spooked-horse relievers through ninth innings to safety, with Jeurys Familia a frequent client? Alvarez’s approach is a little different — more drill sergeant than therapist, unafraid to give an earful to hurlers with far more years on Earth and seasons in the majors.

One of my enduring memories of the 2024 season is Alvarez in San Diego with his helmet off, barking at a saucer-eyed Huascar Brazoban, 12 years his senior. Alvarez didn’t care then and he didn’t care in DC. He let Diaz have it, doing everything except fire the ball back as a wake-up call, a la Jerry Grote. (And Gary Carter, though his angry return throws got less publicity.) And it worked wonders, at least in a very Diazesque way. Yes, our closer went to 3-2 on both Dylan Crews and certified pest Jose Tena, but both fastball and slider had more zing after the meeting of minds, and the administrator of said zing looked to be paying closer attention to the task at hand. Down went Crews on the fastball, down went Tena on the slider, and up went the W in the victory column.