2023 Mets Season Preview: Depth Gives Team Confidence

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — It is one of baseball’s enduring little mysteries, how a game so rich in possibilities also offers so many precedents. You may see something new at the ballpark every day, yet if you stick around a while, you feel like you’ve seen it all before.

So it was in mid-March, when the Mets lost Edwin Díaz, the game’s premier closer, to a torn patellar tendon in his right knee just two weeks before opening day. The circumstances of the injury were novel — bouncing on the grass with his Puerto Rico teammates after a victory in the World Baseball Classic — but the basics were familiar to General Manager Billy Eppler.

“I remember when we lost Mo,” said Eppler, a former Yankees assistant, recalling a season-ending knee injury to the Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera in May 2012. “I remember exactly where I was sitting when I got the news: the Atlanta airport. I think I was seeing an amateur for the draft, and I was flying back. Twitter informed me, because everybody saw it at the same time.”

Rivera’s knee injury, which came while chasing a fly ball in batting practice in Kansas City, Mo., did not stop the Yankees. Another veteran right-hander, Rafael Soriano, filled in ably for Rivera, and the team was talented enough to still win the most games in the American League.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/sports/baseball/mets-season-preview.html