Just Mets

The story for the Mets pitching staff has boiled down to two themes so far this season: poor run support and bad luck due to mistakes behind them.

That has meant that unless the starting pitching was anything but perfect, the chance of the starting pitcher earning a victory is very small.

It was no different for Noah Syndergaard on Friday night. He was good, but less than perfect, his team didn’t score for him, and the team made both physical and mental mistakes behind the young starting pitcher.

Syndergaard owned one of the physical mistakes and one of the mental mistakes, and of course the results weren’t pretty after that.

The result was four runs – three earned – on seven hits and five strikeouts in six innings for Syndergaard, as he fell to 1-2 with a 3.63 ERA.

Two of the runs Syndergaard allowed came in the sixth inning, one of which the result of an errant pickoff attempt with Jung-Ho Kang at first, and Lucas Duda not throwing to second to try and make a play on Kang as he advanced. Then, Kang waltzed to third base when Syndergaard failed to look him back, and Kang scored on a shallow flyball to Michael Cuddyer, who was not in proper position to make a good throw home.

“It’s not necessarily the best results I was looking for,” Syndergaard said after the game. “I didn’t have the best velocity on my fastball tonight, and I worked on throwing quite a bit of two-seamers. I feel like they induced a lot of weak contact tonight.”

Syndergaard was also plagued by a misplayed groundball by Lucas Duda in the second inning which resulted in two, two-out runs to score.

“That was definitely an error,” Duda said. “That’s a play I should make 10 out of 10 times. I just came a little bit up on it and it stayed down. That’s an error. No doubt. That’s my fault.”

Unfortunately for the Mets, that was all the Pirates needed on Friday night.

Syndergaard got off to a tremendous start, striking out the first four Pirate batters he faced. But has he said, his fastball lacked the zip it had in his start in Milwaukee after the first inning. He clearly realized that and became reliant upon his secondary pitches, and that strategy worked for him thanks to his filthy curveball which can be equally as tantalizing has his fastball.

That’s part of the pitching maturity the team has wanted to see from Syndergaard throughout this process. He showed on Friday that without his best stuff, he can get by and keep the team in the game by utilizing his secondary pitches and by pitching to and inducing weak contact. That was impressive and the mark of a big league pitcher, particularly after the rough second inning – he went on to retire the next seven Pittsburgh hitters.

“I feel like there are some good positives to take out of it. I didn’t have my best fastball, but I was able to throw quite a bit of pretty good changeups in the zone, and down in the zone, and got a few strikeouts. I was able to locate my curveball and throw it for a first-pitch strike and throw it in the dirt when needed.”

That alone shows Syndergaard belongs here, pitching every five days for the Mets and not at Triple-A. Most days, he’s going to have his good fastball to go along with his filthy curveball, and he’s going to look more like the pitcher who faced Milwaukee last weekend. It’s this which will eventually escalate him to the top of this Mets rotation – he’s already off to a good start in achieving that over his first two weeks in the big leagues.

He along with the rest of the pitching staff cannot be perfect or even great everyday – that’s when they need the team to pick them up, which they have not done consistently so far this season.

At any rate, Terry Collins said on Friday night Syndergaard will not be demoted when Dillon Gee is activated, something he is obviously pleased about.

“I’m glad to stay here,” Syndergaard said. “I feel like I’ve had some pretty good success here. And I’m looking forward to making my next start.”

Now, if his team could hit a little bit for him and play better behind him – and all of the starting pitchers for that matter – perhaps the story would be different for Syndergaard.