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.
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