Noah Syndergaard made his fourth start for the Los Angeles Dodgers, this time facing his former New York Mets club where he became one of MLB’s most feared pitchers.
The right-hander, who is now looking to get his career back on track, signed with the Dodgers because they have had a long line of success in helping pitchers improve. And despite a poor outing his second time out with L.A., Syndergaard has been solid in his starts.
Against the Mets, he pitched six innings while allowing two runs. He only struck out two hitters, but overall, Syndergaard felt good on the mound.
“They were aggressive, but I feel like I executed all my pitches,” Syndergaard said. “I feel like it’s probably the best I felt in terms of being free and easy and not really thinking about my delivery out there.”
Although Syndergaard was hoping to rediscover some of his velocity that made him an elite pitcher, that has yet to happen with the Dodgers, and it seems unlikely a triple-digits fastball will ever return. Instead, Syndergaard has improved his control and spent a lot of effort working on his mechanics, which seems to be paying off.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily a workload issue,” Syndergaard said about his velocity. “It’s just getting my delivery to be as efficient as possible. I think it’s trending in the right direction.”
Syndergaard has now thrown six innings in three of four outings, allowing three runs or fewer in each of them. But Dodgers manager Dave Roberts felt Syndergaard’s outing against the Mets was the best he’s looked.
“I thought his last start, the results were pretty good, but I don’t think his stuff was what it was today,” Roberts said. “I thought today was a really good, complete outing against a good ballclub.”
Noah Syndergaard downplayed facing Mets
Although he was facing his old team, Syndergaard did not put a lot of stock into the matchup. “There’s a lot of new faces over there,” he said.
“Guys like (Brandon) Nimmo, Pete (Alonso), (Jeff) McNeil, (Tomás) Nido, Drew Smith in the bullpen, those guys I had the luxury of playing with and wearing the Mets jersey with them. Other than that, it was just another day at the yard.”
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