The Wrong Kind of Lawyer

Edwin Díaz ran into a bit of adversity last night that he should have been able to avoid.

Let’s say, hypothetically, you hired a civil lawyer for a criminal case. People might think it was a bad move. “This isn’t his kind of case!” they’d say. “He might not be as good as a criminal specialist!”

On the first day of the trial, hypothetically, say your civil lawyer — who is not a criminal lawyer, but is still a lawyer — showed up to court wearing a penguin costume. Would your critics have been right? I’d say not, because civil or criminal, you still don’t expect a lawyer to show up to court in a penguin costume.

Which brings me to Edwin Díaz. Should Díaz have pitched last night against the Phillies? Maybe not. Should he still have been better than he was? Absolutely. Here’s the thing that Díaz’s fans need to acknowledge: just because it wasn’t the very best situation doesn’t mean the night doesn’t count against him at all. Don’t blame the client; blame the civil lawyer in the penguin costume.

It was a non-save situation, and Díaz was pitching on back-to-back days. However, he’d only thrown 12 pitches the day before, and before that, he’d been perfectly well-rested. Maybe if you wrote a “Should Edwin Díaz Pitch?” formula, it would spit out a tentative “no.” But that doesn’t mean that the events of his outing are expunged from his pitching record.

Andy Marlin/USA Today sports

Entering with a four-run lead, Díaz walked the leadoff man, then after inducing a pop-out, allowed an RBI triple to Roman Quinn. He struck out Odubel Herrera, walked Matt Joyce, then faced Rhys Hoskins. Hoskins hit a ball that, basically, either was or was not a home run. It wasn’t, but it was close enough that if the Phillies had jumped up and said “actually, that counts as a home run,” it might have been.

Aside: MLB needs to crack down on home run fences. At Shea Stadium, it was perfect: in the vast majority of the outfield, a ball was a home run if it cleared the fence, and not a home run if it didn’t, and that was that. In some parks, the fence is still a fine determinant of whether or not a ball is a home run; at Wrigley, for instance, there’s a big net, and if a ball doesn’t land in it, it’s pretty much fair game.

But some of these parks — like Citizens Bank Park, which robbed Hoskins of his game-tying homer — are ridiculous. The fence has a metal railing behind it, which is a completely different color and material from the fence padding and set a few inches back, but it’s in-play — why? The answer is “because the Phillies say it is,” but with a few mandates, MLB could make everything a lot less confusing. 

Why not simply mandate that all in-play parts of a fence need at least a line at the top that’s the same color as the majority of the fence? Philadelphia ground rules would be vastly less confusing if the Phillies added some fence-style padding at the top of that in-play railing, just to signal that hey, this is in play. A home-run fence really only has one job: to clearly differentiate between home runs and balls in-play. A bad fence can fail in a few different ways, but the one on display in Philadelphia — a railing that sits behind the fence and looks like home run territory, but just isn’t — is an easy fix.

So, Díaz. He already has a long of conditions in which he can’t pitch that his fans somehow accept: “Edwin Díaz is elite, you just can’t bring him into non-save situations, or with runners on base, or in the middle of an inning, or in any inning besides the ninth, or against the Dodgers, or if it’s too cold out, or in odd months...” Add “he can never pitch on back-to-back days, ever” to the list, and you’ve basically got a pitcher who can pitch once every three days, maybe.

This is a strange place to be in, since there’s not really a solution to the problem. The solution is “Edwin Díaz should pitch better,” which isn’t actionable for most people. There’s also the fact that Díaz left the game with back tightness after allowing Hoskins’ near home-run. Maybe he’ll need some time to recover, or maybe his back tightened up just when Jeurys Familia happened to need time to get loose. 

But Díaz is supposed to be an elite closer. That means pitching through tough situations, sometimes on back to back days. If he can’t, then never mind elite; the Mets need more closing options. A closer who can’t shut down the bottom of the Phillies’ lineup with a four run lead the day after throwing 12 pitches? Sounds about as useful as a lawyer in a penguin costume.