Hitters everywhere beware.
The 1-2 punch of New York Mets pitching duo Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard locked down the No. 1 spot on MLB.com’s list of top 10 pitching duos in the game right now.
MLB took where each of these pitchers ranked overall based on wins above replacement (WAR) and added those two numbers together to create the one and two starters overall score. The lower the score, the better the duo. At a solid single digit of 9, those two pitchers were deGrom and Syndergaard.
The Mets power arms beat out the likes of Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg, Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco, Yu Darvish and Jose Quintana, and Chris Sale and David Price, All pitchers from teams that managed to break into the postseason last year.
It should come as no surprise, however, that Thor and deGrom take cake at No. 1.
Thor mowed down seven straight Nationals in start Sunday, and deGrom had eight punch outs against the O’s in five scoreless innings on Saturday. Collectively, just from their Spring Training starts, the two have posted a 1.86 ERA.
The former looks in midseason form, and said Sunday he is ready to go.
“I feel like my progression this spring has been really nice,” Syndergaard said. “I’m ready to get out of Florida and get back to New York.”
Catcher Travis d’Arnaud gave the righty a big vote of confidence, raving about the right-hander’s stuff on Sunday.
“He was nasty … really nasty,” d’Arnaud said. “Everything was working — four-seam, two-seam, curveball, slider and changeup were all working. He was able to put them all on both sides of the plate. We were able to effectively mix up sequences and have some fun out there.”
A good sign for what to expect going into the season and hopefully, to help uphold MLB’s ranking.
The rest of MLB.com’s list of the best duos in baseball can be found by following this link.
Perhaps the health of these two will be the remedy to get the Mets back into the postseason.
So much of the pressure of the past was to have this so-called “murderer’s rotation,” where every starter No. 1 through 5 had to be a fireballer, lights out type of guy. But if you look back at some of the teams on this list, Nationals, Dodgers, Astros, Indians and so forth, they made the postseason and none of them needed to do so with every single starter being untouchable.
If Syndergaard and deGrom can anchor the staff, beyond the other pitchers don’t need to be aces. The Mets just need quality starts and if they hit a skid, the power duo can correct matters and provide a spark.
If the Mets can produce offensively just as well as they did last season (the team finished ninth overall in OPS), deGrom and Syndergaard could be more than enough to at the very least, get them back into wild card contention and hopefully even more.
