Thoughts from Joe D.

First of all, congratulations to everyone on the Binghamton Mets who are a win away from clinching the division and a playoff berth. At 78-47 they are having one of the greatest seasons in the history of the Eastern League. A hearty round of applause for all the players and also manager Pedro Lopez, hitting coach Luis Natera and pitching coach Glenn Abbott. Just an outstanding job by all of them.

Last night, Noah Syndergaard tossed his third consecutive scoreless outing – a stretch of 15 scoreless innings in which he’s walked just two batters while striking out 18. Wow…

What impresses me is how well he understands the Mets’ hard stance on not letting him pitch past five innings.

“I kind of wish I could go more to give the bullpen some rest so they don’t have to come up with those four other innings, but I enjoy it for five innings. I know there’s a bigger picture involved with that innings cap.”

There’s also a big difference here as far as his mindset goes regarding his dominance. In his last start, Zack Wheeler admitted to getting too caught up in trying to go for the strikeouts, and he blamed that for his high pitch counts. Syndergaard has a different approach.

“I don’t really tally the strikeouts I had, I was just pitching.” said Syndergaard after last night’s game. “I just feel like I had all my pitches going for me tonight. It’s a lot of fun to pitch when you’ve got the fastball, curveball, and changeup going for you.”

Syndergaard will have his next turn in the rotation skipped as per the directives of the Mets front office. He will not start again until August 28.

This may seem overprotective to some of you, but a commodity like this one should be overprotected.

Think of the big picture, just as Syndergaard is doing…

Thanks to Lynn Worthy for providing us the quotes from last night’s game.

Original Post 8/16

Apparently, Noah Syndergaard was watching Zack Wheeler‘s start last night and he wanted to one-up him. Well, he didn’t strike out a dozen, but I think we’ll all take ten over five innings. Syndergaard has now strung together three straight outings of five shutout innings while allowing no more than three baserunners in each start.

Take that in for a minute… Noah Syndergaard has now tossed 15.0 straight shutout innings over three starts and has allowed only three baserunners in each of those starts. His final line today:

5.0 IP, 3 H, 0 BB, 0 ER, 10 K

At this point, it seems pretty safe to ignore what Keith Law says about Thor… The more Syndergaard pitches in Double-A, the more he practically owns the entire league. Need some more numerical proof? Here are his combined numbers over his last nine starts: 5-0, 1.76 ERA, 46.0 IP, 34 H, 10 BB, 54 K, .205 BAA.

Syndergaard is an extremely exciting prospect to cover… I fully expected five shutout innings from him today even before he started. Am I psychic? No, I’m sure most of you saw it coming too…but those ten strikeouts? Well. Keep on dominating, young grasshopper…Flushing awaits you next June.

(Photo Credit: Gordon Donovan)