Just Mets

On Tuesday night in Chicago, the Mets took the next step in the evolution of their franchise, officially graduating Noah Syndergaard to the big leagues in a showcase of some of the game’s brightest prospects at Wrigley Field.

Syndergaard opened his big league career in scintillating fashion: with a strikeout of Dexter Fowler on Syndergaard’s signature pitch, the curveball.

“It’s always nice to get the first strikeout out of the way the first batter of the game,” Syndergaard said after the game. “After that point there, that’s when the nerves started to go away.”

“[Syndergaard is] good. As advertised,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon explained after the game. “Great pitcher’s body. Great stuff. The thing I liked about him is he’s a pitcher, too. He’s just not out there throwing. I was impressed.”

He was indeed impressive. His fastball is understood at this point – he averaged almost 98 mph with his 65 four-seam fastballs last night. His curveball was absolutely incredible as well, almost more so than it’s been at any point this year in the minor leagues. It looked like the curveball he had while at Single-A and Double-A with late, darting movement away from the right-handed hitters, and it just ate up the left-handed hitters all night long.

Perhaps the most impressive part of Syndergaard’s outing is he was fearless. He was willing to throw all of his pitches in any count, behind or ahead. It’s something the Mets were waiting to have happen over the last year at Triple-A, as too often when he got into trouble, he would become fastball-happy and just revert to being a thrower.

Instead, he used his change-up and curveball to fight his way back into counts and induce weak contact for outs. It’s not often a young pitcher, who is known for a 100 mph fastball, finesses the opposition for outs, especially in his big league debut.

This special night did not come without bumps, however.

Syndergaard was plagued by a mental mistake behind him in the third inning. With two outs and nobody on, Kris Bryant grounded to third, but Daniel Murphy took his time throwing the ball to first, and Bryant beat it out for an infield single.

Syndergaard clearly got off his game at that point, walking the next two batters to load the bases. Fortunately, he got out of the jam by inducing a flyball from Soler, 18 pitches after Murphy’s mistake.

Those extra 18 pitches came back to bite Syndergaard, through no fault of his own. He entered the sixth inning having thrown 80 pitches. If not for the mental mistake by Murphy, he would have entered the sixth inning having thrown only 62 pitches.

Totally different ballgame, both for Syndergaard and the Mets.

“I didn’t make the play and it cost Noah some pitches,” Murphy said of his mental mistake. “He could have worked deeper into the game. I was pretty frustrated.”

The extra pitches Syndergaard threw in the third were all under duress, equating to 22.5 percent of those 80 pitches through five innings.

After throwing five scoreless innings, he ran into immediate trouble in the sixth. He allowed a leadoff single to Jorge Soler, then a run scoring double to Starlin Castro. Then, Chris Coghlan homered to make it 3-0 Chicago.

Syndergaard allowed three runs in 5 1/3 innings with four walks and six strikeouts.

Regarding Murphy’s mental mistake in the third inning, a valid argument could be made Syndergaard shouldn’t have wavered. But, it’s also his big league debut, and from his (or any pitcher’s perspective), he just induced an inning ending groundout which suddenly didn’t happen and the kid had to regroup. It wasn’t totally unexpected, given the circumstances.

With the team not hitting, there is zero margin for error behind the pitching staff, be it physically or mentally. The problem is, the  mistakes are happening way too often, both in the field and on the bases, and they seem to cost the Mets every single time they occur.

It doesn’t matter who is pitching or how well they pitch. These mistakes cannot continue to happen if the Mets expect to continue to be successful.