While all the attention and focus was on Matt Harvey during Friday’s live batting practice at Tradition Field, top prospect Noah Syndergaard also tossed to Mets batters and was equally as impressive.
“It was nice coming in and throwing after Harvey did. All the eyes are more on him than me. It’s cool to share the same mound as he did and to be included with guys like him, Zack Wheeler and Jacob deGrom.”
“He threw the ball very well himself,” Terry Collins said of Syndergaard. “It’s going to be fun when we get into these games.”
Syndergaard, 22, is expected to make his major league debut this season and he told reporters that he is eager to show what he can do following what he called an underwhelming and disappointing 2014.
Fueling his drive and motivation was his September snub last season when the Mets decided not to call him up.
“It was kind of heartbreaking,” Syndergaard told reporters in Port St. Lucie. “I went home, let things relax a little bit, and then got back in my workout program and just enjoyed time in the offseason. But it was disappointing.”
“To be in the big leagues has been my dream ever since I was a little kid. I use last September as a little extra motivation, because I don’t want to hear that phone call again.”
Syndergaard admitted he spent too much time worrying about things beyond his control and insists that this year he’s not wasting any energy focusing on when he’ll be promoted to the majors.
“I started really pressing, getting really tense last year, because I paid attention to the Super 2 deadline,” Syndergaard said. “I had too much in my head last year. And when it wasn’t happening, I started pressing a little bit more. Now, I just kind of let things take its own toll.”
Syndergaard said that he spent so much time online reading about himself that he finally deleted the Twitter app from his phone to get away from all the noise.
“He should have done that around May 15th last year,” said Frank Viola, the Las Vegas pitching coach. “He was reading everything about himself, and you knew when he read something good, when he read something bad, from the way he came on the field just for warm-ups.”
Syndergaard went 9-7 with a 4.60 ERA, striking out 145 and walking 43 in 133 innings pitched last season for Triple-A Las Vegas. He’s now driven to improve those numbers and after consulting with manager Terry Collins he now understands that it’s in his power to dominate this season and force the Mets’ hand.
“You want to pitch here? Pitch your way out of there,” Collins said. “That’s what the message is going to be to Noah.”
