Zachary Wheeler gets his pitch count risin’
He doesn’t care for an early hook
Jason Vargas sees the order twice ‘n’
Mickey figures out he is cooked
Jake deGrom is a Cy Young winner
Ain’t ya glad he showed up? (Oh yeah!)
And when the ballclub is fallin’ apart
Sometimes Matz gets it all sewed up
And then there’s Thor
He strikes out ten
And then there’s Thor
Gives up no runs
And then there’s Thor
Goes all the way
And then there’s…
Mascot-trashin’
Dinger-bashin’
Beats the Reds in solo fashion [1]
Right on Thor!
***
Translation for all you kids out there who aren’t fluent in Maude [2]: Noah Syndergaard [3] threw a 1-0 shutout and homered to defeat Cincinnati at Citi Field on Thursday afternoon. The Bea Arthur reference in a 2019 baseball game recap is no rarer than the concept of a Met pitcher doing what Noah did.
That, when broken down by its component parts, was as rare as a Mets pitching/hitting performance gets.
• Nine innings from a starter surely seems exotic to the point of extinct, but it actually still happens once in a great while. The Mets chalked up three complete games last season.
• Allowing zero runs across those nine innings is highly unusual, yet not without precedent in this modern world. Syndergaard himself achieved such a feat on the final day of 2018.
• A Mets pitcher homering will never not be cause for jubilation, but with four instances of DH-defying hurler power in the books already in 2019, we can no longer refer to it as a wholly infrequent phenomenon.
• Winning 1-0 while driving in the run that makes you the victor is an extremely uncommon occurrence, but Met examples exist. Most famously, Jerry Koosman and Don Cardwell turned the trick in the same doubleheader at Pittsburgh in 1969. More obscurely, we’ve also had Buzz Capra versus the Giants at Shea in 1972 (the day before Willie Mays’s debut); Ray Sadecki at Atlanta in 1974; and Nino Espinosa at Philadelphia in 1977. Forty-one years passed without an addendum until Wheeler beat the Pirates, 1-0, last July at PNC Park, doubling in the “1” himself.
But Zack, who was the only pitcher in this scenario to register his RBI with an extra-base hit, went only six. Cardwell and Capra each turned the ball over to Tug McGraw after eight to save their respective superlative efforts. Koosman, Sadecki and Espinosa went nine, but no, they didn’t homer.
Noah homered (in the third inning, high and deep to the opposite field, off Tyler Mahle).
Noah completed what he started (scattering four hits, walking only one).
And, for that matter, Noah became the only member of the seven-Met 1-0/1-RBI club to notch double-digit strikeouts, including a ninth-inning K that Wavin’ Jesse Winker was hilariously ejected in the middle of (bye Jesse!).
Koosman-Cardwell Arms has been headquarters to a very exclusive society for a half-century. After fifty years, it’s been compelled to add a private penthouse suite. You homer for your only run in a 1-0 complete game win as Noah Syndergaard did, you have earned the most singular view of them all.