3 UP
1. Thor Has Returned
Looking at the Mets starting pitchers, the one guy you have been waiting to break out all season long has been Noah Syndergaard. Well, Thor is back to being the dominant starter we have all have known him to be with Friday night’s special start.
In seven brilliant innings, Syndergaard completely shut down the best offense in baseball, limiting them to just three hits in what would prove to be the sixth time all season the Red Sox have been shut out.
In each of his last five starts, Syndergaard has gone at least six innings, and he is 4-0 with a 2.86 ERA. He is also getting his control back, as he is throwing 68% of his pitches for strikes.
More than any of that, he is primed for the big stage. For whatever the reason, Syndergaard pitches best when the lights shine brightest. That is what he did in Boston, and it is something we could possibly look forward to happening in 2019.
2. Terrific Bullpen Work
In September, the Mets are getting much more from their bullpen. In fact, during this month, the Mets bullpen has a 2.91 FIP which is the fifth best in the majors. That number looks all the more impressive when you consider it included Paul Sewald‘s meltdown on Saturday.
Sewald aside, the Mets bullpen did fantastic work against a formidable Red Sox team. Putting Sewald aside, the bullpen would allow one earned on six hits with two walks and eight strikeouts in 7.2 innings pitched.
There were a number of impressive performances, but Daniel Zamora and his slider is front and center with him striking out four of the five batters he faced.
3. deGrom’s Cy Young Case Improves
On the one hand, you could see Jacob deGrom taking the no decision while allowing three earned run in a game in over a month as a hit against his Cy Young candidacy. After all, with games dwindling down, he is still under .500 with little hope of getting to double digit wins.
That said, we did see deGrom strike out twelve Red Sox in the game. That’s quite the feat because entering the game, the Red Sox were the second toughest team to strike out in all of baseball (19.7%). In his twelve strikeout performance, he struck out 44.4% of the batters he faced.
More than that, we have seen Aaron Nola and Max Scherzer stumble in September.
In his three starts this month, Nola is 1-2 with a 5.60 ERA while averaging under 6.0 innings per start. Similarly, Scherzer is 1-2 with a 5.40 ERA, albeit while averaging 6.2 innings per start.
All told, deGrom is separating himself from the pack, and he is solidifying his Cy Young case by just going out there and dominating. His 27 straight starts allowing three runs or fewer is an MLB record. He’s now matched Bob Gibson and Chris Carpenter for the MLB record of 22 consecutive quality starts.
By the way, when Gibson and Carpenter did it, they won the Cy Young Award.
3 DOWN
1. Prospects Being Mishandled
On Saturday, Corey Oswalt was given the start, despite him not starting a game in nearly a month. While Oswalt held his own, he was only able to last 2.2 innings before getting lifted.
This start is representative of how Oswalt has been handled this season. We have seen him sit idly by waiting for a shot only for him to need to shake off some rust in that appearance. This is not how you handle a pitching prospect.
The Mets have also had a number of other missteps this season.
Dominic Smith has received inconsistent playing time, and he’s been shifted between positions. Luis Guillorme was not even recalled after hitting .304/.380/.417 in Las Vegas. Instead, the Mets opted for the empty bench spot and Jack Reinheimer. The same Reinheimer who got picked off of first base in a close game on Sunday.
Overall, the Mets have not made decisions conducive to improving their young players. Worse yet, they have struggled to discover which young players are prospects and which ones should be gone after the season.
2. First Base Situation
On June 15, when Wilmer Flores came off the disabled list, he was handed the first base job. Flores would play more than well enough to continue there for the rest of the season and to compete for the job in Spring Training next year.
However, Flores would get pushed aside once Jay Bruce was activated off the disabled list. Since that time, Flores would only get the start in 10 of the Mets next 22 games.
If the Mets were really intent on never giving Flores a real shot to play first, you really have to question why the Mets have handled the first base job the way they did. Instead of playing Flores, the team could have given Dominic Smith a chance to run with it to see what could happen.
Certainly, there is a vast contingent of Mets fans who would have preferred to see Peter Alonso play over Flores, Bruce, Smith, or whoever else could come in his way.
No matter what the case, the Mets had a chance to find out about Smith this season, and they blew it because they wanted to play Flores at first and Austin Jackson in center field. This isn’t how well run organizations operate.
3. Mets Eliminated from Division Race
When the Mets went 5-21 in June, we were really just counting down the days until the team was officially eliminated from the race. Even with their good play of late, no sane person was expecting a miraculous 1973 comeback. Still, seeing the Mets chances being dashed stings.
Since the Mets moved to Citi Field, the team has had just two winning seasons, and they will have finished in fourth place in the National League East in six of their 10 seasons here.
There are many elements to that. For example, Fangraphs recently noted the Mets have typically been built in an ill suited fashion for Citi Field, and as a result, they have the biggest differential between road and home winning percentage since 2012.
When the Mets do bring in a new front office, one of the things that new GM is going to have to analyze and discover is just how to build a sustained winner in this ballpark.
