ONE STREP CLOSER
Mets crush Phils to keep wild-card lead on day they announce Thor is sick & will miss start
After he delivered more bad pitching news Friday afternoon — this time, it was that Noah Syndergaard had strep throat and wouldn’t start Saturday — Terry Collins laughed. It wasn’t a funny, ha-ha kind of chuckle, more like a defense mechanism for a man who’s approaching a certain uncomfortable limit.
Who could blame him? Every day at the Mets now seems to start with another dark chapter about the club’s pitching, once its pride and joy. Syndergaard should be OK after a course of antibiotics, but his strep throat could throw off the Mets’ plans to start him if they reach the NL wild-card game.
It’s not their only current pitching woe, either. Jacob deGrom and Matt Harvey are out for the year. The Mets announced Thursday that Steven Matz had a setback with his shoulder and wouldn’t make his scheduled start on Friday. Syndergaard remains weak and is being pumped with IV fluids, so Bartolo Colon is the last starter standing from the Opening-Day rotation.
“You are kind of numb to it now, it’s
happened so much,” Collins said of all the injuries.
Plus, the Mets have been burning through relievers lately, which could reverberate through the rest of their pursuit of a playoff spot. A day after they matched a club record by using 10 pitchers in beating the Phillies, they deployed six more Friday night, in part because Gabriel Ynoa, who started in place of Matz, lasted only two innings.
It could’ve been much worse, especially since Collins did not want to use either Jeurys Familia or setup man Addison Reed because of their recent workloads. Sean Gilmartin was among the unusable, too, considering he is tabbed to take Syndergaard’s place Saturday. That trimmed his options from a list that, because of September’s expanded rosters, includes 11 relievers.
But that’s where Hansel Robles comes in. He’s been pitching well lately and he gave the Mets a huge effort Friday, earning his first career save by throwing 2.2 scoreless innings to finish a 10-5 victory over Philadelphia. The bullpen, which had to provide seven innings of work, would’ve been even more taxed without his performance, which included getting a key double play to end the seventh.
“That really saved us,” Collins said of Robles’ work.
“It’s a sense of pride for me to do that,” Robles said through a translator. “I hope I get the chance to do it again.” The Mets must watch their bullpen workload even as the schedule is running out of games. Relievers are generally exhausted this time of year, anyway, and three of their top bullpen arms are among the top 13 in appearances in the majors — Reed (76, tied for second-most), Familia (74, tied for fifth) and Jerry Blevins (70, 13th).
Plus, the Mets having recently stacked big relief games atop each other, especially with Gilmartin starting instead of Syndergaard. When Collins talked about Gilmartin’s start, the manager’s hopes seemed to max out around five innings.
While Collins said he thinks the bullpen “can get to the finish line,” he also acknowledged how important it is to make sure of that. He knows he needs to tend to his top relievers “because if we don’t have them for the last six or seven days, we’re in trouble.”
The Mets have always believed that pitching would be their great advantage, particularly their starters. But that’s gone now. Their one chip is Syndergaard in the wild-card game. There’s still hope, but Collins knows it’s no sure thing.
“Right now in our situation we can’t worry about Oct. 5,” Collins said. “We got to worry about being there Oct. 1. We’re just hoping right now with the medication and some rest and nourishment he gets some energy back to where maybe he can pitch Monday, Tuesday. Move him back just a couple of days.
“When we get into the last three games of the season we’ll see where we sit. He and Bartolo are both pitching that last series because that could be something we need so if we don’t need one of those games we can push one of them back. Right now, until we know how Noah is going to feel in a couple of days, we don’t have that rotation set up.”
Collins suggested the Mets could “just brush it off. What else can happen? You play through. Played through it tonight, got to play through it tomorrow. Hopefully, we go into those last few days with he and Bartolo ready to go.”
Syndergaard, who had not been at the ballpark the previous two days, was at Citi Field Friday and saw trainers and did some light throwing in the outfield. At least that sounds encouraging for someone whose ailment is more manageable than the typical Met pitcher’s problem this year.
These days, though, nothing is certain when it comes to the Mets and their pitching ills. It’s enough to make a sane man laugh, but not in a good way.