Noah’s New Arc

It’s tough to quantify what the presence of Noah Syndergaard would have done to a team that went 12-32 in his absence. With all the off days and the Vargas injury thrown in, it’s tough to tell which games he would have pitched in, and with some of them being wins anyway, some of them resulted in the Mets not scoring any runs anyway, and with the rest of the team resembling something out of the Bangkok scene from “Escape from L.A.”, even Noah being stellar might not have resulted in a net gain of nine wins.

Even if Noah’s missed starts, which would probably have been eight of them, had gone perfectly, the Mets are probably still an under .500 team, albeit not at the embarrassing rate of decline as the Mets actually took to get there, so it’s fair to say that Syndergaard’s injury didn’t single-handedly ruin the season. It didn’t help, but in a way it should have taught us a lesson about being all crabby about Syndergaard when he was “only” giving up three runs in six innings or two runs in five, and not taking the mound and being ALMIGHTY CARTOON CHARACTER THOR WITH MJOLNIR IN HAND AND HAIR WAVING SEDUCTIVELY IN THE WIND!!!

Syndergaard went five inning and threw 75 pitches while giving up just one run and hitting 100 on the gun. It was as good an outing as we could have expected from Noah in his comeback. As this season is over, my hope is that he can continue to thrive every fifth day and go into next season with no lingering physical issues. Tonight’s outing was also efficient and devoid of high pitch counts which forced him out of other games early, and it will be nice to see that going forward. But most of all, I hope we don’t trade him. 25 (soon to be 26)-year-old pitchers with his physical gifts don’t grow on trees and should be built around, and not traded for the unknown.

I mean, the Mets should really think about signing Syndergaard (and Jacob deGrom) long term. After all, they’re in excellent financial health now. (Which they should be after charging six dollars for a Coke Zero even though Coca-Cola is a prominent sponsor at Citi Field. Not to mention they sold visors for $20 as their “special deal” on hat day for everybody past 15,000 which didn’t get hats. Nice of them to sell half a hat for $20 for people that didn’t get free hats. Damn right they should be in “excellent financial health”.)

You might have looked up in the sky at about 7:30 and saw two lights close together hitting the sky. Not to worry, it was just the Mets scoring four runs in the first two innings off Tanner Roark, including an RBI single by Syndergaard himself. It was all they would score, and on most nights this season, that lead would have evaporated into nothing. Luckily, the Mets got two good innings each from Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman to give the Mets a 4-2 victory. Jeurys Familia was not traded … Mickey Art Howellaway just decided that throwing him two days in a row was no longer worth the aggravation of facing tough questions. I’m not sure Mickey likes to do that anymore.

Tomorrow’s game is at 4:10. Head to the park early for Reversible Rally Hat Day. If you don’t get one the Clubhouse Store special of the day will probably be Irreversible Rally Hats for $20, for when your team is down 14-2 in the fourth. Zack Wheeler will start, and he’ll try to raise his trade value and get to pitch in the playoffs.

Today’s Hate List

Happy retirement, Chase.