The Mets thought they were about to pick up the series securing win in Game 1 of Sunday's doubleheader against the Yankees, with a 7-2 lead in hand and two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning.
But after a series of walks and errors, the Mets were now up 7-5 with one on and Aaron Hicks up to bat against Edwin Diaz.
After stretching Diaz out five pitches, Hicks sent the sixth pitch out to the right field seats to tie the game. A Gio Urshela walk-off single off Diaz that brought in Mike Tauchman from second gave the Yankees the stunning comeback win.
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After the game, Luis Rojas said the Mets still have confidence in Diaz and will continue to go to him in tight situations.
"He's a guy that can come into situations and get big strikeouts and close games for us," Rojas said.
"We still trust him. We still love his stuff. And that's when he's going to get the ball, when there's tight situations, tense situations like that where he can come in and get the out."
For someone who often comes in as the closer, when you see your team up by five runs and there's one out left before the game ends, you don't typically expect to get called in to throw, but that was the situation Diaz found himself in Sunday.
"To be honest, I thought the game was going to be over pretty soon, but then a few of the misplays happened and then they called me into the game," Diaz said through a translator. "Before I got into the game I was only able to throw about eight, nine or 10 warm up pitches at that point, so I wasn't able to go through my regular routine. ...But when I came into the game, I can't really make an excuse. I threw the pitches that I wanted to throw."
Despite some of his struggles this season, Diaz feels that he's throwing the ball "excellent" compared to last year
The sample size between years is still too small, but Diaz already had four blown saves in 13 appearances this season, whereas he had seven in 58 games in 2019.