Noah Syndergaard leaves rehab start with elbow soreness

Mets right-hander Noah Syndergaard was supposed to throw at least four innings in a Low-A rehab start on Tuesday, but he left after tossing just one frame. The Mets have since announced that Syndergaard left “for precautionary reasons due to right elbow soreness” (via Tim Britton of The Athletic).

Syndergaard is working his way back from the Tommy John surgery he underwent in March 2020, making this news especially troubling. It’s also another unsettling development for an injury-riddled Mets team that has a slew of other important players on the IL, including two of Syndergaard’s fellow rotation members in Carlos Carrasco and Taijuan Walker.

If this doesn’t prove to be another serious health problem for Syndergaard, he’ll serve as a key summer reinforcement for a New York team that currently has a tenuous hold on the National League East lead. The hard-throwing 28-year-old has enjoyed a terrific career with the Mets going back to 2015, having pitched to a 3.31 ERA with a 26.4 percent strikeout rate, a 5.6 percent walk rate and a 49.1 percent ground-ball rate over 716 innings. Unfortunately for the Mets, Syndergaard hasn’t taken a major-league mound since Sept. 29, 2019. On a personal level, Syndergaard is facing a pivotal season as a free agent-to-be, making it all the more important that he’ll recover quickly from this issue.