Edwin Diaz gets hurt needlessly, but not in vain

The World Baseball Classic is still worth doing despite the Mets losing their closer.

The worst times are when victory takes only a second to curdle into sadness.

It last happened on May 29, 2010 in Anaheim. Kendry Morales launched a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth, off Seattle’s Brandon League, and the Angels won. The players streaked to the plate and formed a small tunnel for Morales to enter, then mobbed him. They had done that for all such moments all season and for seasons before that.

The hero had always emerged from such celebrations intact. The walk-off man had always been able to walk off. Not Morales. When he jumped and landed, he somehow tore ligaments in his knee. He didn’t play any more in 2010 and he didn’t play a bit in 2011. Morales did salvage his career and retired with 213 home runs, but that moment would haunt him and the franchise. “We went from the highest of highs,” catcher Bobby Wilson said, “to the lowest of lows.”

That was true until Wednesday night in Miami. Nothing was higher at the moment, for Puerto Rico’s World Baseball Classic team, than the elimination of the Dominican Republic as the tournament heads into the quarter-finals. (If you’re wondering why Puerto Rico, the Dominican and Venezuela were in the same group of a tournament that purports to show the best baseball nations, you’re not alone.)

Closer Edwin Diaz, of the Mets, struck out Teoscar Hernandez and it was over. Puerto Rico had won, 5-2. The team gathered for a mass hug, with jumping involved. Then it all stopped, and the players watched Diaz lie on the ground. He got up and tried to walk but he couldn’t. He went off on a cart and his brother Alexis, who pitches for the Reds, cried helplessly. On Thursday he learned that he had torn his patellar tendon and would likely miss all of the 2023 season.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico has a WBC to win. But this wasn’t the right time to think about it.

Enrique Hernandez of the Red Sox said the same thing Wilson had said 13 years earlier. In the clubhouse, it did not smell like victory.

“It’s quiet,” he said. “Aside from being the best closer in the game right now and being a huge part of this team, Sugar is one of the glue guys in that clubhouse. He’s been leading the charge in terms of setting up parties for us in Fort Myers, to start getting together as a team and having a good time and getting to know each other, the guys that don’t know each other. Same here, he was one of the guys that set up that big dinner we had last night. He’s just a guy that, I mean, I’m just going to put it out there, like he has a really big bank account, but his heart is way bigger than his bank account is.”

Both are not quite as big as his arm or his impact. Diaz signed a 5-year, $102 million extension with the Mets because he nailed 32 saves in 35 chances and held opponents to a .160 batting average. Now, just as the Mets thumbed their noses at all salary-cap restraints in order to leverage a World Series, he’s probably gone.

His future might not as perilous as that of the World Baseball Classic, however. When Freddie Freeman tweaked his hamstring playing for Canada, the Dodgers developed a pronounced limp. Freeman assured everyone that he’ll be ready for Opening Day, but what if he had stayed in camp?

Well, according to Mookie Betts of Team USA, he would have missed an unmissable rush. Betts was part of Wednesday night’s win over Colombia that put the Americans, the defending champs, into the knockout round.

“I encourage those who are watching to come play for Team USA because this is a lot, a lot, a lot of fun,” Betts said. “It beats taking four at-bats on the back fields.”

Whether it beats losing your closer for the season is another thing entirely.

This will set off the same howls you heard when Paul George broke his leg in a Team USA midsummer exhibition basketball game, or when any player gets hurt in a bowl game when he could have been saving himself for the NFL draft. It ignores that the injury bug is a blind organism that strikes at random, whether there’s contact or not. Driving, particularly in the middle of the night within a 100-mile radius of Southeastern Conference football players, is more hazardous than playing any baseball game, particularly any exhibition game. Diaz wouldn’t have gotten hurt in a Grapefruit League celebration, because there’s no such thing, but Gavin Lux tore up his ACL, in season-ending fashion, while running to third base in a Dodgers’ exhibition and he didn’t make contact with anyone. Major League Baseball has looked into all this and done the numbers, and there has been no correlation between WBC participation and injury, at least not until now.

But it does spark legitimate questions about when to play this thing, what it means and whether a risk-benefit analysis would justify its continuance.

A spring training WBC limits the pitchers. There is pitch-count legislation that forces managers to juggle their bullpens. But it honestly doesn’t look much different from a regular-season game in that respect, not when it’s sacrilege to make a pitcher face a hitter three times.

Playing it after the exhausting season, when the nation has already turned its eyes to the NFL, is a non-starter.

Playing in the middle of the season, and replacing the All-Star Game, is a bridge too far. A legitimate tournament takes at least two weeks, and teams couldn’t adjust as well to injuries.

And what is the goal? To promote baseball in other countries? Baseball seems to be doing fine in the countries that win. It’s a great story when a Czech bartender gets to play in the same event as Shohei Ohtani, but it isn’t worth all the disruption.

No, the best way to do this is to fit the WBC into the Olympic umbrella that seems to open and close at its whim, and there are problems with that, too.

There will be no baseball in Paris next year, but there was a 6-team tournaemnt in Tokyo two years ago, which the Japanese won over the Americans. Major league players do not participate. Hockey players were Olympians, in the midst of their NHL seasons, and there has never been a better game with better players than the 2010 gold medal final in Vancouver between Canada and the U.S., in February, just before the push toward the Stanley Cup playoffs. But the NHL got none of that Olympic money, fretted about injury and burnout, and pulled out after the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Most of the NHL players would like another chance.

The Americans did win gold in Sydney, 23 years ago, when Tom Lasorda managed, and strong young arms like Roy Oswalt and Ben Sheets teamed with wise veterans like catcher Pat Borders, outfielder Ernie Young and first baseman Doug Mientiewicz. They were able to walk around the Olympic Village with medals that looked just like the ones on the chest of Michael Phelps. No one involved will forget it. But that Olympics was held in September, one of the two most unthinkable months, with October, to involve the best players.

Is the WBC worth the risk? For over 36,000 fans in Miami it was. A city that can’t find a reason to connect with the Marlins danced its way to the ballpark to see Puerto Rico and the Dominican. In Phoenix, almost 30,000 watched the U.S. eliminate Colombia, but the U.S.-Mexico game drew nearly 47,500 there.

Top American players believe in the WBC as they never have before. Betts, Mike Trout, Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt and other luminaries have signed up, even though it would be easier to play an occasional exhibition and hit the golf course twice a week. If players care that much, management should swallow its fear and keep supporting the WBC, especially when baseball needs every kilowatt of energy it can get.

But, next time, maybe the players could watch the Kendry Morales tape. The playing shouldn’t be safer than the party. Besides, we all should remember how to distance.

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