Wrong thread.

The Guardians have Clase tied up for another 4/$18 with 2/$20 in options (with escalator clauses -- I hope they're good ones).

Diaz certainly seems to e the elite guy these days -- and a one-man embodiment** of the Flight of the Closer given how Mets fans felt about him after the first year. Every time I start to wonder if teams have given up on paying big money for closers, somebody pays big money for a closer. Still, it probably is a good move if he pitches like has has the last 3 years or so. Some obvious for ages 28-33 (Mo, Chapman, Kimbrel, Jansen, Hoffman, Gagne, K-Rod, Street ... Thigpen was already toast before age 29)

Mo 342 IP, 203 ERA+, 14 WAR
AC 227 IP, 155 ERA+, 6 WAR (reduced a bit by 2020)
CK 227 IP, 163 ERA+, 7 WAR
KJ 296 IP, 158 ERA+, 6.5 WAR (not sure why he's lower with all those extra IP)
TH 354 IP, 162 ERA+, 11 WAR
EG 114 IP, 104 ERA+, 1 WAR
FR 315 IP, 129 ERA+, 6 WAR
HS 205 IP, 130 ERA+, 4 WAR

Diaz has a better track record than some of those guys. Still, over the last 5 years for Diaz (roughly overlapping Chapman, Kimbrel, Jansen but 6 years younger) was 282 IP, 141 ERA+, 8 WAR -- 3 outstanding years, 1 bad year, 1 crap year. Closer WAR has never been priced like regular WAR (or WAR is a poor measure for closers) ut $100 M for 6-7 WAR seems a bit much. Anyway, if Diaz is worth $20 M a year then Judge is worth about $100 M and Ohtani about $7 B.

** I suppose by defintion all embodiments are one-person. Can you be AN embodiment of something or always THE embodiment? Maybe I should just gone with epitome.

Diaz
2019 5.59 ERA, 26 saves
2021 3.45 ERA, 32 saves
2022 1.31 ERA, 32 saves

I mean, it's almost as if there's no correlation at all. :-)

But the Mets didn’t give that deal to someone who appears to be in danger of a regression. They gave it to a 28-year-old (Diaz will turn 29 in March) who is at the height of his powers and is coming off one of the most dominant seasons any reliever has ever had.

A guy coming off one of the most dominant seasons any reliever has ever had is about as good a regression candidate as anyone can find.

A decent hitting catcher.

You might not know it from the Atlanta series, of course, but Alvarez is the decent hitting catcher.

Everybody except, arguably, average players in their prime ages is a "regression candidate" -- that's the whole point of regression. The question for Diaz is what in the world is his projection to begin with? Do we give this freak season full weight even though we "know" there's no chance he'll repeat it? Do we ignore that horrible season 2019 season? How much weight do we give 2020?

Relievers are inherently small sample. That means our "raw" projection (e.g. Marcel) has a large variance. A large variance on the raw projection means we have to assign greater weight to the regression factor.

Diaz ERA+
career 139
last 5 141
last 4 126
last 3 176
last 2 166
Marcel 233 (simple 5/3/2)
ignore 150ish

You tell me. But in this case, the one I really don't trust is Marcel (so it will be right). ("ignore" is his career ignoring both 2022 and 2019)