CHICAGO — New York Mets closer Edwin Diaz is facing a 10-game suspension after he was ejected from Sunday night’s 5-2 win over the Chicago Cubs for having an illegal substance on his pitching hand.

Diaz, 30, was thrown out by crew chief Vic Carapazza before he took the mound in the bottom of the ninth inning.

“I touched his hand,” Carapazza said in a pool report after the game. “Grabbed his hand. The substance was extremely sticky. Discolored … it definitely wasn’t rosin and sweat. We’ve checked thousands of these. I know what that feeling is. This was very sticky.”

Diaz claimed he uses only rosin, sweat and dirt on his hands.

“I use the same thing, always,” he said. “I rub rosin, sweat and I put my hand in the dirt a little bit so I can have some grip on the ball. … I was really surprised because I didn’t have anything on my hand, glove or belt. They always check everything.”

Carapazza confirmed there were no sticky substances on Diaz other than on his hand, but that’s enough to get a player ejected. In recent years, Major League Baseball has cracked down on pitchers using foreign substances other than rosin because they allow for better grips and more spin on the ball.

Carapazza added that the Mets really didn’t argue the ejection or explain what happened.

“I told them I have a job to do,” Carapazza said. “We’re supposed to check it, and that was too sticky. I can’t ignore the substance that was on there.”

Diaz now faces an automatic 10-game suspension for use of an illegal substance. He can appeal but said he isn’t sure if he will.

“It’s tough to let my teammates down for 10 games,” Diaz said. “That sucks.”

Mets manager Carlos Mendoza lamented the loss of Diaz; by rule, the Mets have to play short a man for the length of the suspension.

“We have to move on,” Mendoza said. “Guys are going to have to step up.”

Drew Smith and Jake Diekman did that Sunday night, combining to pitch a scoreless ninth inning after Diaz was tossed as the Mets won for the ninth time in 11 games.

Diaz has struggled this season, with just seven saves and a 4.70 ERA. He missed all of last season with a knee injury suffered while celebrating a Puerto Rico win in the World Baseball Classic, and spent about two weeks on the injured list this season with a shoulder issue before being reinstated June 13.

LOUDON, N.H. — Christopher Bell raised a broom over his head and clutched a 24-pound lobster in victory lane all because he earned his third Cup win of the season in an outcome that would have been impossible before this NASCAR season.

Heck, it still looked pretty grim for most of Sunday at a rainy track.

Once the skies cleared, NASCAR busted out its latest creation it had saved for a rainy day — wet weather Goodyear tires that allowed the race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway to continue all the way to a thrilling end.

Bell mastered the Cup Series’ first race that ended with cars running on rain tires and pulled away after a 2-hour, 15-minute weather delay to beat darkness and the field and win Sunday at New Hampshire.

He also swept the weekend at New Hampshire following Saturday’s win in the Xfinity Series.

“Hopefully that was entertaining because it was something different, something new, and nobody knew what to expect and what to do,” Bell said. “The guys that figured it out the quickest were the most successful.”

On Friday, Bell spoiled the reveal that Chase Briscoe is joining him at Joe Gibbs Racing in 2025. Then he ruined Briscoe’s best shot at his first win of the season, holding him off over the final two laps of the overtime finish.

With darkness falling, Bell cruised past Josh Berry and Briscoe and remained the driver to beat at New Hampshire. He has four wins in the Xfinity Series at Loudon and won a Cup race at the track for a second time.

This time, he won with 86 laps raced on the new tires.

“It was dark. It was very, very dark. That was creeping up in a hurry to being too dark to race,” Bell said. “Certainly there were dry parts on the track, but there were still a lot of wet parts on the track, too. I can’t tell you how far away it was, but in my opinion I didn’t think it was ready for the dry tires yet.”

Bell was used to the rain — he won last month’s rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600 with 151 laps left in the race.

New Hampshire actually needed four extra laps. Briscoe was second and Berry third. Kyle Larson and Chris Buescher completed the top five.

“I think we could have probably started with the track a little bit wetter,” Briscoe said. “The beginning was pretty fun. We were all over the place. Five wide at times and slipping and sliding around.”

Even with the start of the race bumped up a half-hour, New Hampshire was a mess about from the moment the green flag was dropped. The race was marred by wrecks that wiped some of NASCAR’s biggest stars out of contention — all while the rest of the field tried to remain in contention and beat the looming rain that hovered over the entire weekend.

Tyler Reddick, who won at Talladega this season, held the lead when the race was red-flagged because of rain with 82 laps left in the scheduled 301-lap race.

Fans fled the grandstands and drivers went back to their motorhomes with seemingly no chance of a return as the gloomy weather worsened. New Hampshire and NASCAR waited out a tornado watch, nearby lightning strikes and a severe thunderstorm warning before it could resume the race after a delay of more than 2 hours – and after crew members swept standing water off pit road – and cars all hit the 1.058-mile track on new tires.

NASCAR let teams use wet-weather tires for the only second time in a points race this season. Teams had a maximum of four sets of wet-weather tires to race on the damp oval track. Teams had to take rain tires during pit stops and their position could not be affected.

They also had no choice of tire.

They were also no match for Bell in his No. 20 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing.

Oh, as for that spoiler that Briscoe was headed to JGR, Gibbs said all was forgiven.

“Somebody asked me about that in the winner’s circle, and I said, ‘Christopher Bell can do anything he wants,'” Gibbs said with a laugh.

Busch’s woes Kyle Busch‘s dismal day ended with his Chevy getting towed off the track.

Busch hit the wall running the caution laps to end his race and continue what is shaping up as the worst season of his Cup career. Busch had already tagged the wall just past the halfway point and was running 24th late in the race when he was collected in another wreck. He finished 35th in yet another rough outing this season driving for Richard Childress Racing.

A two-time Cup champion with 231 NASCAR wins, Busch has yet to win a race this season driving for RCR. Busch raised some eyebrows last week when he suggested he would be open to returning to two of his former Cup teams, though he said he remained committed to RCR next season.

The 39-year-old Busch is on a 39-race winless drought. It’s the worst losing streak of his career.

LOUDON, N.H. — Christopher Bell used a three-wide, last-lap pass on Saturday to drive away and win the NASCAR Xfinity Series race for the fourth straight time at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

The 29-year-old Bell needed three extra laps on the 1.058-mile track but remained undefeated at New Hampshire in the Xfinity Series and scored another win for Joe Gibbs Racing in the No. 20 Toyota. The 20 team behind crew chief Tyler Allen has won four times this season with four drivers: John Hunter Nemechek, Aric Almirola, Ryan Truex and Bell.

“Once I got to the inside at three-wide down the front straightaway, I felt like I was in the position I wanted to be in to win the race,” Bell said.

Bell led 43 of 203 laps and added this checkered flag to his collection of Xfinity wins at New Hampshire in 2018, 2019 and 2021.

Sheldon Creed was second and Cole Custer third, both drivers caught up in Bell’s thrilling pass and both drivers fell just shy of keeping Bell out of victory lane.

“I feel so bad for Sheldon,” Bell said. “He’s been really really close to winning these things.”

Creed has two runner-up finishes this season and 10 overall in the Xfinity Series without a win in 86 career races. He’s tied with Dale Jarrett and Daniel Hemric for most second-place finishes before a victory.

“I’m running out of ways to lose these things,” Creed said.

Bell and Custer kept the headlines confined to the track.

Bell blurted out that Chase Briscoe was set to leave Stewart-Haas Racing, which shuts down at the end of the season, and make the move to Joe Gibs Racing in 2025. Briscoe is slated to drive the No. 19 Toyota for JGR.

“I stayed off social media, for sure,” Bell said.

Custer lost his Cup ride at SHR after the 2022 season and spent the last two years driving for its Xfinity program. He won the series championship last season and leads the points standings this season by 15 points over Zane Smith.

“I felt like we had that one,” Custer said. “We had the best car all day and to have it ripped away with one lap to go is just heartbreaking.”

Custer, who led 114 laps at New Hampshire, could get a return to the Cup next season.

SHR co-owner Gene Haas announced this week he will remain in the Cup Series and field one car in 2025. Haas will keep one of the four charters that belong to Stewart-Haas Racing and will operate next season as the Haas Factory Team.

“I think what Gene Haas has done in this sport, it would be a dream come true to get to run that Cup car,” Custer said.

Stewart-Haas Racing is primarily run by Joe Custer, the chief operating officer and longtime Haas confidant. Custer will remain president of Haas Factory Team – and his son could get the Cup seat.

“Whenever I went back to the Xfinity Series, my goal was always to go back to Cup,” Cole Custer said. “I’ve been trying to work on what I can do to get myself better over the past year and a half. At the end of the day, you try and do as best you can and you hope it all sorts itself out. But I really don’t have much to say or anything right now that’s solidified or anything.”

Justin Bonsignore finished 23rd in his Xfinity Series debut hours after he won a race at the track in NASCAR’s Modified Tour. He’s a three-time NWMT champion. Driving the No. 19 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, Bonsignore was collected in a late wreck.

The Xfinity race was run on wet-weather tires, a first for the series on the oval.

Matt DiBenedetto was disqualified during post-race inspection for three loose lug nuts on the right rear.