It wasn’t the prettiest of starts on Thursday in the Mets Home Opener against the Nationals, but Noah Syndergaard still managed to pitch well. His command was far from where it usually is and a bad game from the umpire did not help the cause. Case and point:

Syndergaard had a no-hitter through five and more importantly, got a lot of weak contact (Victor Robles excluded). His average exit velocity against him was 79.3 MPH whereas last week, it was 90.6 MPH. Syndergaard’s ability to use his slider for swings and misses helped a lot.

Last week, he was not able to use that slider to generate and swings and misses whereas this week, he got a solid four swings and misses out of 17 thrown. Last week, he only got two swings and misses out of 21 thrown.

The big reason it was more effective was where it was thrown. Last week it was mostly up in the zone as you can see below:

(Image Courtesy of Baseball Savant)

However, this week he managed to keep those pitches lower.

(Image Courtesy of Baseball Savant)

Syndergaard does not get a lot of spin on his slider so he needs to command it very well so that he can get whiffs. Locating his slider made him more effective overall and improved the results from his curveball and fastball. Here is a look courtesy of the great, Rob Friedman:

His release point makes all these pitches look the same to hitters until the very last moment. This trend looks promising from Noah so expect him to be just fine going forward.

All in all, Syndergaard allowed two runs on only one hit, two walks, and struck out six over six innings.