NY Mets stars Juan Soto, Edwin Diaz proved not every metric matters

When trying to make sense of the idiosyncratic game of baseball, it's easy to dig in and pore over every stat to try and figure out what is going on and what will happen next. The underlying metrics can be useful for determining whether or not a breakout is real, if a player has been bitten by bad luck, and can help solve a plethora of other mysteries. However, as two New York Mets stars proved in 2025, sometimes a number is just a number.

Juan Soto and Edwin Diaz are two of the best in the game at their respective positions. Soto broke records with his contract last offseason, and while it will be on a smaller scale, Diaz has the chance to do the same for closers this winter.

Therefore, it might surprise you that both showed up on the leaderboards for the biggest decreases in some key underlying metrics. After all, Diaz took home his third reliever of the year award (2 Hoffmans, 1 Rivera), and Soto's "disappointing season" was "only" good enough for a third-place NL MVP finish.

Mets stars Juan Soto and Edwin Diaz were two of the biggest sliders down the Statcast leaderboards in 2025, but it doesn't mean what you think

So, yes, these are still two of the game's elites, but they each took a tumble in specific areas. Soto saw the second-largest dip in average bat speed from 2024 to 2025, while Diaz had the 13th highest year-over-year increase in hard hit rate.

That sounds bad, right? After all, could Soto's bat really be slowing down when he is just now entering his prime? What does that mean for the next 14 years? And as for Diaz, how could anyone feel comfortable handing him a five-year $100 million contract with this news? That would be a disaster, right?

Not really. Let's look at Soto's bat speed. In 2024, it came in at an average of 75.4 miles per hour, which was a 94th percentile mark. In 2025, he lost an average of 1.8 miles per hour, clocking at 73.6 miles per hour, which was still way above average, ranking in the 72nd percentile.

In case that doesn't alleviate your worries, his average exit velocity (93.8 miles per hour) ranked in the 98th percentile in 2025, while his hard hit rate (55.3%) and barrel percentage (18.1%) were both 97th percentile marks.

As for Diaz, his hard hit rate increased 9.4%, from 30.3% in 2024 to 39.7% in 2025. Guess what? This is more of the same story. That 2024 rate was a stellar 97th percentile mark, while the 2025 rate is still above-average in the 57th percentile. That's still a sizeable drop, but fret not, his average exit velocity of 88.5 miles per hour (69th percentile) shows that balls weren't getting scorched that often, and his expected batting average of .170 couldn't have been more microscopic, ranking in the 99th percentile.

This should teach us a few things. One, no one metric is the end-all all be-all, but rather several related metrics can paint a more complete picture. Two, not all fluctuations are inherently bad. And three, when you're among the elite of the elite, you can afford a dip and still be elite.