Looking to bring the heat back
Newest Dodger Syndergaard hopes his velocity begins to crank up once again
NOAH Syndergaard glanced down, touched the tips of his index fingers together and then sighed as he recalled his frustrations with last season.
“It just kind of felt like a Chinese handcuff,” the newest Dodgers pitcher said, referring to woven bamboo finger traps that tighten as you try to pull away.
“The more I struggled,” he continued, “the harder it was to get out of it.”
There was a time Syndergaard made pitching look easy, when the flame-throwing All-star dominated on the mound with a steely disposition and seemingly infinite well of ability.
In 2015, he helped the Mets reach the World Series as a Rookie of the Year contender. The following season, he earned votes for the Cy Young and MVP awards.
His overpowering stuff put him on the short list as one of baseball’s best
— or at the least, nastiest — pitchers alongside Clayton Kershaw, Jacob degrom and Max Scherzer, the only major league starters who bettered Syndergaard’s 2.93 ERA from 2015 to 2018.
And though he was only in his early 20s, Syndergaard thrived on the plaudits and pressure alike.
“I always want to raise the bar,” he told Sports Illustrated in 2017.
Since then, however, Syndergaard has been struggling to get his career back off the ground.
A torn right lat muscle cost him most of 2017. A strong return in 2018 was followed by his worst full big league campaign a year later, when he posted a career-worst 4.28 ERA.
Another blow came during spring training in 2020, when Syndergaard began feeling elbow discomfort that ultimately led to Tommy John surgery, keeping him sidelined almost all of the next two seasons.
The frustration peaked last year, with what Syndergaard felt to be an unsatisfying — though hardly unproductive — return to the mound in which he posted a 10-10 record and 3.94 ERA and aided another World Series run with the Philadelphia Phillies.
“I’m definitely not trying to be just like a serviceable No. 4 or 5 starter,” Syndergaard said, his understated tone belying his towering, 6-foot-6-inch frame. “I want to get back to where I used to be.”
That’s what drew the Dodgers to the 30-year-old free agent this offseason: That his numbers weren’t that bad, that flashes of greatness still appeared, but that he seemed disheartened at his performance anyway, motivated for more entering his second year back from the Tommy John procedure.
“It’s one of those things where, he’s a little bit a victim of his own greatness,” Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes said. “There’s a lot of things we’re excited about … I feel like it’s gonna be a big impact Noah is gonna bring.”
Who do you want to be? That’s the question Syndergaard has been trying to answer, with the help of his new coaches with the Dodgers, since he signed a one-year, $13 million deal this winter.
The contract, which includes another $1.5 million in potential bonuses for innings pitched, was less lucrative than some offers Syndergaard fielded from other teams. The right-hander, however, believed the Dodgers had “the best coaching baseball has to offer.”
“I have a lot of confidence,” he added, “they can get me back to where I want to be.”
First, Syndergaard has to figure out what that means.
With the Angels and Phillies last season, the seven-year veteran never felt completely comfortable with his mechanics or delivery. He navigated some starts successfully, completing six innings or more in 11 of 25 appearances, but also suffered clunkers more often than he liked.
His once 98 mph fastball also sat at just above 94 mph on average, and the rest of his arsenal failed to induce as much swing and miss as it did pre-surgery, with his strikeout rate dropping nearly 10 percent.
“I started regressing instead of getting better,” Syndergaard said. “Everyone’s like, ‘I guarantee you’ll be back to 96, 98 (mph) come July.’ It wasn’t really happening.”
The longer it went on, the more Syndergaard got in his own head. At times, he became preoccupied with his mechanics during games instead of simply executing pitches.
“I went down a rabbit hole of trying to improve some things as opposed to just chalking it up to … having gotten surgery,” Syndergaard said, adding: “I was trying to get better. It kind of backfired on me.”
And yet, shortly after his Dodgers signing in December, Syndergaard made headlines with a bold proclamation.
“I see no excuse as to why I can’t get back to 100 mph,” he told reporters during an introductory video conference. “And even farther than that.”
It’s a lofty goal, but one the Dodgers don’t believe is far beyond the realm of possibility.
“There’s going to be a marked increase in velocity,” manager Dave Roberts said.
“I do think there’s more velo,” pitching coach Mark Prior added. “Is it 100? I don’t know … But is it 96, 97? Maybe. Time will tell.”
Every time Syndergaard’s triple-digit target was mentioned to team officials last week, it was met with another important caveat regarding his performance in 2023:
As much as they want to see Syndergaard light up radar guns again, it’s not a necessity. After seeing Syndergaard work around his decreased fastball speeds last season, they think there is a new, dominant hybrid style on the mound he might be able to achieve.
Gomes expects “the nights that (his fastball velocity) is on the upper end, it’s gonna be really hard to square him up.”
But, the general manager also noted, “the beauty of Noah is, no starter has their best stuff every time they go out there, so he has multiple options to navigate a lineup.”