Thor comes up huge — again
T THE risk of getting political, there’s only one word, with only one pronunciation, that can fully capture the promise Noah Syndergaard has displayed in his last two starts now: YUUUGE. Huge (pivoting to proper English) for the 2016 Mets. Huge for the Mets in 2017 and beyond. Huge for Syndergaard’s own development. Thor seems to be riding a second wind, and that led to his third win in as many starts. By pounding the lowly Phillies, 12-1 at Citi Field, behind the dynamic offensive duo of Yoenis Cespedes and Asdrubal Cabrera, the Mets (66-63) moved within 2 ½ games of the Cardinals for the second wildcard spot.
“I feel like there’s a great atmosphere in the clubhouse,” Syndergaard said. “We’ve got a lot of energetic, veteran guys that are helping the young guys. Really grasping and buying into the program and just all pulling for one another.”
As Cespedes said through an interpreter, “It feels like the last two months of last season.”
Terry Collins’ group has won six of its past seven contests, even while putting two more players (Steven Matz and Justin Ruggiano) on the disabled list, shelving Jacob de Grom and losing Neil Walker to paternity leave during that stretch. For all of the “bad optics” that surrounded Cespedes’ decision to play golf while nursing a right quadriceps injury that ultimately landed him on the DL earlier this month, the Mets now are producing great optics, the kind that should help the beleaguered Collins.
For all of the deserved excitement over a reborn lineup, one finally producing with runners in scoring position (the Mets went 5for-13 with an intentional walk on Saturday), a team desperately in need of a staff ace seems to have found one — the same guy who served as the staff ace for much of the season’s first half.
Syndergaard threw 104 pitches to get through seven innings and allowed just two hits and two walks while striking out seven. While he has won three straight starts, it’s the past two in which the big righty has truly regained his mojo, mixing improved sinkers and sliders to provide both excellence and length. On Aug. 21 in San Francisco, Syndergaard threw just 98 pitches over eight innings to beat the Giants, 2-0
Considering that Syndergaard had endured a 10-start stretch with a 4.09 ERA before his San Francisco revival, totaling only 55 innings in that span, it had been fair to wonder whether the sophomore — in his first full big league season — carried a tank running on empty.
“I think he hit a wall a little bit that he hadn’t early,” Collins said. “He was the one guy that didn’t show any effects of last year for the first couple of months. I think he ran into a streak where he did.”
“It was just more like a mental kind of blockage,” Syndergaard countered. “Trying to think too far in advance during the game as opposed to getting out there and trying to win one pitch at a time.”
The timing couldn’t be much better. DeGrom, who had assumed the ace’s mantle with Syndergaard’s deceleration, will sit out a round of the rotation because of how horribly he pitched in his prior two starts. After the Mets start rookie Robert Gsellman on Sunday in an effort to sweep the Phillies, they will go at it with the Marlins, in a crucial home series, starting Rafael Montero on Monday; Seth Lugo on Tuesday; Matz (they hope) on Wednesday; and Syndergaard on Thursday. Not how they drew it up in spring training.
Hence the importance of Syndergaard’s rising since Phoenix (that would be his Aug. 16 win at the Diamondbacks, a 5 2/3-inning, 106pitch performance in which he hit a two-run homer). It’s so huge, you could say that his rebirth trumps much of the bad news the Mets have suffered lately. A