Wednesday evening, on has last night as a 26-year-old, a disastrous outing from Noah Syndergaard resulted in a 10-7 Mets loss to the Cubs at Citi Field.

Coming into the game, Thor had thrown eight-straight quality starts for the first time in his career. Over that stretch he lowered his ERA from 4.68 to 3.71, pitching to a 1.82 ERA with 55 strikeouts and just 12 walks.

Looking to continue this streak, Noah took the mound in Queens on a mission. He struck out his first batter, Jason Heyward, and it looked like Thor was ready to take care of business as usual. But the inning quickly went south, turning into the worst of his career.

Ahead with a 0-2 count, Noah hit Nicholas Castellanos with a pitch. Then Kris Bryant singled for first and second, and Javier Baez hit a ground ball to shortstop Amed Rosario, who tried to flip the baseball to Joe Panik at second but sent it behind him into short right field.  Castellanos scored on the game-altering error to give Chicago the early 1-0 lead, and all runners were safe.

Syndergaard, seemingly flustered about the error, couldn’t get into his groove and gave up hits to the Cubs’ next five batters. Kyle Schwarber doubled, driving Bryant in for the second Cubs run of the frame. Then, with runners on second and third, Addison Russell knocked a single to send in two more. With Russell on first, Ian Happ shot a 2-run laser to left center field to make it 6-0.

 

Victor Caratini singled, and advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt by pitcher Kyle Hendricks. Noah surrendered a walk to Heyward, but with two on and two outs, Castellanos struck out swinging to end the inning. Syndergaard faced eleven Chicago batters, allowing six runs to score in the 39-pitch opening frame.

After an uninspiring first, Mickey Callaway kept Noah in the game to see if he would be able to limit the damage and eat up a few more innings for New York. Bryant knocked a leadoff double off of the struggling starter, and with one out, Schwarber hit his 31st home run of the year to make it 8-1. After eight-straight quality starts, Syndergaard surrendered eight runs in an inning and a third.

The right-hander came back out to pitch the third, and a leadoff Caratini knock put a runner on first. He got the next two outs, but let Castellanos get the best of him, sending a first-pitch, two-run homer to right center field to make it 10-1. This was Noah’s third home run allowed on the evening- for the first time in his career that he’s given up three homers in a game.

On his birthday eve, the 26-year-old took the loss, pitching just three innings, allowing 10 runs (nine earned), nine hits, and walking one with five strikeouts.

“They capitalized on every mistake that I made… I let the team down,” Syndergaard said, after throwing 76 pitches in his career-worst start. He raised his season ERA from a 3.71 to a 4.14.

The Mets rallied to score seven runs against Chicago, but the early damage was too much for the offense to clean up. The team will try to avoid the sweep with ace Jacob deGrom on the mound tonight in Queens, facing off with Cubs’ Jon Lester.