Mets player Diaz does not want to fight suspension due to serious injuries

Edwin Diaz will not appeal his 10-game suspension for ingesting a foreign substance during Sunday night’s win over the Cubs, meaning the Mets’ closer will miss this week’s Subway Series against the Yankees at Citi Field.

Diaz is scheduled to return to the Mets on July 6 when they play the Pirates in Pittsburgh. The Mets are not allowed to fill Diaz’s spot on the roster, meaning they will play the next 10 games shorthanded.

Under standards established by MLB since 2021, when it began enforcing its longstanding ball tampering policy, any ejection for sticky substances carries a 10-game suspension. No player who has received the suspension has ever seen it overturned or reduced on appeal.

Diaz was ejected before the bottom of the ninth inning of the Mets’ 5-2 win in Chicago after a routine drug check early in the inning. Crew chief Vic Carapazza deemed Diaz’s right hand too sticky and ejected him from the game before Diaz had even thrown a pitch.

“When they saw me, they tried to throw me out of the game,” said Diaz, who added he was “really surprised” by Carapazza’s reaction. “I got it. That’s their job. That’s part of the game. When they threw me out of the game, I just kept walking to the dugout.”

Diaz repeatedly stressed after the game that he used rosin, sweat and dirt as usual. He also said that the color of his hands and the amount of these substances on his hands were up to his standards.

Carapazza disagreed, telling a billiards reporter that it “definitely wasn’t rosin and sweat.”

He added: “The substance was extremely sticky. Discolored. That was all. We checked thousands of them. I know what that feels like. That was very sticky.”

Diaz added: “I said you can check my hand, smell my hand. It doesn’t smell like anything. But they kicked me out of the game.”

The Mets’ candidates for the ninth inning include Reed Garrett, Drew Smith and Jake Diekman. Adam Ottavino has done so in the past, but has been relegated to a less prominent role in recent weeks.

With Tim Healey