Maybe it’s time to start Noah Syndergaard in right field.
Hey, the Mets already signed Tim Tebow this month. So stranger things have happened.
It’s no secret that Jay Bruce has struggled since joining the Mets. He is batting .188/.270/.308 with four home runs and 11 RBIs in 148 plate appearances since the trade. He has gone from the NL leader in RBIs to fighting for his starting job in under two months. There’s a lot of talk about Bruce possibly getting benched in favor of Michael Conforto or Alejandro De Aza, two players who have also had well-documented struggles this year.
But perhaps a replacement lies in the rotation rather than the bench.
Syndergaard is batting .167/.262/.389 in 63 plate appearances this year with three home runs and six RBIs. That’s right: Syndergaard has only a slightly lower batting average and on-base percentage than Bruce, and is slugging over 80 points higher than him. He also has just one fewer home run in 85 less plate appearances. Syndergaard averages a homer every 18 at-bats, while Bruce averages one every 33.25.
Syndergaard’s OPS of .651 and OPS+ of 73 are also far higher than Bruce’s .579 and 56 marks in the same category. Obviously Syndergaard has a small sample size, but it’s honestly hard to imagine anyone doing much worse than Bruce has done since he was acquired.
This says a lot more about Bruce’s struggles than it does about Syndergaard’s plate abilities, although Thor is one of the best hitting pitchers in the league.
With every passing day, it’s looking more and more like Bruce is going to join the Jason Bay‘s, Roberto Alomar‘s and Carlos Baerga‘s of the world on the all-time “He was good until he went to the Mets” team. And Bruce may find himself on the bench if things don’t turn around quickly.
Of course, I’m joking about the Mets putting Syndergaard in the outfield– kind of. After the Tebow signing, nothing is really out of the realm of possibility for this team anymore.
