Noah Syndergaard has all the talent in the world. If the Mets want to compete, the right-hander needs to return to his 2016 ways. Realistically, Jacob deGrom cannot be expected to win a third straight Cy Young award. The good news for the Mets is that Syndergaard has the ability to return to that level of dominance.

In 2016, when Noah was one of baseball’s best pitchers, he loved using his slider and for good reason. That season, he threw it 21.1 percent of the time, compared to 15.2 percent of the time in 2019. Considering how good Syndergaard was in 2016, plus the amount of swings and misses he got from it, it seems strange that he would cut down on using it.

The drop off in using that pitch becomes more prevalent when Syndergaard is in firm control of the count. In essence, when he has a 0-2 or 1-2 count on a hitter.

In those counts, Syndergaard threw his slider 166 times during 2016. In 2019, he threw it 124 times in those same counts. You might wonder why 42 pitches matter, but let’s think about it terms of percentages. In 2016, Syndergaard threw 557 pitches in those counts and he had 592 in those counts this season. That meant, he went from using it 29.8 percent of the time in 0-1 and 1-2 counts to using it 20.9 percent of the time. There’s no coincidence that Syndergaard went from 96 swings misses in a 0-2 or 1-2 count in 2016, to 79 swings and misses.

To compound that, he has been relying on his sinker and changeup more in those same counts. His sinker and changeup usage in the aforementioned counts were 10 percent and 8.4 percent respectively during 2016. In 2019, those same numbers were 17 percent and 21.3 percent. The problem is for Noah, is that hitters swung and missed his sinker only 7.8 percent of the time. As for his changeup, whiffed on it at a clip of 15.1 percent. While that is a very strong figure, I would not suggest he throw it in place of his slider. In what was considered a down year for his slider, he still got hitters to whiff at it 17.9 percent of the time. If anything, Syndergaard should find a way to have the two pitches work together as opposed to letting them eat into the other.

There are a lot of reasons to believe that Noah was struggling. I definitely think a changed ball might have impacted the way he threw his slider. Firing their pitching coach who emphasized using sliders was very likely a factor too. But that said, I think he will rebound and go back to making that pitch a weapon in 2020. A more analytical pitching department gives me hope that the Mets will fix Syndergaard and have him return to his 2016 form.