{"id":66142,"date":"2024-02-01T13:38:57","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T18:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=66142"},"modified":"2024-02-01T13:40:03","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T18:40:03","slug":"jake-diekman-new-york-mets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/02\/01\/jake-diekman-new-york-mets\/","title":{"rendered":"Mets Continue to Re-Shape the Bullpen with Latest Signing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Mets have reportedly been interested in adding a second lefty reliever to the bullpen on a cheap deal. On Thursday, they accomplished just that. The Athletic reports that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/d\/diekmja01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jake Diekman<\/a> and the Mets are in agreement on a deal.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The Mets are close to an agreement with left-handed reliever Jake Diekman, league sources told me and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ken_Rosenthal?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@Ken_Rosenthal<\/a>: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/QdQo9XqlZs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/QdQo9XqlZs<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Will Sammon (@WillSammon) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WillSammon\/status\/1753085255358025936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 1, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>The New York Mets Sign Jake Diekman<\/h2>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Diekman, 37, will pair with\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/raleybr01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Brooks Raley<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0as the second veteran southpaw in the Mets&#8217; bullpen. Diekman struggled in 2022 and early 2023. Many evaluators thought he had\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2022\/03\/16\/the-career-of-jake\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">nothing in the tank<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0after the Chicago White Sox cut him in May. However, he latched on with the Tamp Bay Rays and excelled.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">In 45.1 innings across 50 games with the Rays, the lefty produced a 2.18 ERA (192 ERA+), 1.12 WHIP, and a great 28.7 percent strikeout rate. Perhaps a little surprisingly, at his age and profile, Diekman still throws hard. His average fastball velocity last season was 95.4 mph.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Jake Diekman in 2023 with CHW &amp; TB: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/LGM?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#LGM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2022 56.2 IP<br \/>\n\u2022 3.34 ERA, 1.324 WHIP<br \/>\n\u2022 64 K<\/p>\n<p>Diekman posted a 2.18 ERA over 50 appearances with Tampa Bay. Great pickup for the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Mets?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Mets<\/a> bullpen. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/RWoYEYv5dU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/RWoYEYv5dU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 GENY Mets Report (@genymets) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/genymets\/status\/1753092906083086535?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 1, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>What Diekman Will Bring to the Bullpen<\/h3>\n<p>Success came for Diekman last season thanks to his great ability to induce soft contact. He ranked in the 99th percentile in Hard-Hit percentage (27.1 percent) and the 98th percentile in both Average-Exit Velocity and Expected-Slugging. Diekman&#8217;s four-seam fastball represents his best pitch. He threw it over 57 percent of the time last season, and its Run Value of 5 marked the best out of all of his pitches. Diekman&#8217;s walks represent the biggest red flag in his game. His 15.6 percent walk rate ranked in the first percentile in 2023, meaning nobody gave up walks like Diekman did.<\/p>\n<p>However, that number might not represent the adjustments he made in Tampa Bay. In 11 1\/3 innings with the Chicago White Sox last year, Diekman produced a walk rate of 22.4 percent. That decreased significantly (13.5 percent) with the Rays. While his Rays rate is still high compared to the league average, it&#8217;s more manageable and closer to his career norm. With Raley expected to serve as the primary lefty in high-leverage innings, the Mets signed Diekman for the middle innings to clean up messes.<\/p>\n<p>Diekman mainly pitched in low-leverage situations in 2023 and likely will do the same with the Mets.<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: \u00a9 Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Mets have reportedly been interested in adding a second lefty reliever to the bullpen on a cheap deal. On Thursday, they accomplished just that. The Athletic reports that Jake Diekman and the Mets are in agreement on a deal. The Mets are close to an agreement with left-handed reliever Jake Diekman, league [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4683,"featured_media":66152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,2,1071,35],"tags":[5048,28245,2087,566],"class_list":["post-66142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mets","category-featured","category-mlb","category-news","tag-brooks-raley","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-jake-diekman","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4683"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}