Dave Eliand Rips Apart Hype Surrounding Noah Syndergaard

Is Noah Syndergaard the next Mets startingpitcher on the hot seat? 

With Matt Harvey no longer a member of the New York Mets, pitching coach Dave Eiland gave a cryptic description of Noah Syndergaard’s performance this year during the Mets off-day telling reporters:

“I just don’t know where all the expectations came from,” Eiland said. “He spent 2-1/2 half years in the big leagues? So, I don’t know where all the expectations came from, I wasn’t here for all of that, but he has yet to do a whole lot at the major league level.”

The stinging criticism of Syndergaard comes hours before he toes the rubber for the Mets against his old team, the Toronto Blue Jays on Tuesday night. While Eiland’s comments are extremely hard, there is some merit. Syndergaard has not been as dominant as the Mets had hoped coming into the season.

Keep in mind, Syndergaard made only seven starts last season after missing a huge chunk of the season due to a partially torn lat muscle in his pitching arm. So there are definitely concerns moving forward, and Eiland knows it.

In eight starts, Syndergaard is 2-1 with an ERA of 3.09 and a WHIP of 1.20, both numbers are higher than his career averages in both categories. Syndergaard’s biggest problem this year has been pitch count, managing to go beyond seven innings only once this year.

In six of his eight starts, Syndergaard has thrown 95 pitches or more after six innings or less. In fact, he registered 92 pitches in 4 innings on April 4 against the Phillies, and 101 pitches after 5-1/3 innings against the Brewers, May 15. 

After a rough start against the Colorado Rockies on May 6, where he walked four and gave up a mammoth home run to Ian Desmond in a 3-2 loss, Syndergaard told reporters that he is “getting the mediocre starts out of the way so (he) can dominate in September.”

If those comments didn’t rankle the feathers of Eiland and manager Mickey Callaway, it’s hard to imagine what would.

Eiland is trying to go the tough love route with Syndergaard by irritating him with public criticism, hoping that it brings the best out of him. Call it the Bill Parcells strategy. The former Giants and Jets coach was notorious for ribbing his players, telling them they weren’t good enough only to get the very best out of them on Sunday.

That of course is a different sport, and a totally different generation. We won’t know if Eiland’s criticism will have a positive impact on Syndergaard’s game until he takes the mound tonight.

Eiland and Callaway are not going to treat their pitchers with kid gloves, the way Terry Collins and Dan Warthen did for years. The Mets shipped Matt Harvey out of town because of his unwillingness to follow the program. Now the attention turns to Syndergaard, who like Harvey, is named after a comic book character, and has a cocky attitude.

The Mets need Syndergaard to find himself and get back on track, or this once vaunted Mets staff that boasted some of this generations ‘best arms’ will quickly go the way of Generation K, which, in case you don’t know, was the trio of young arms the Mets had back in 1995: Jason Isringhausen, Bill Pulsipher and Paul Wilson. That trio didn’t last long.